
Palantir Goes to the Frankfurt School - walterbell
http://www.boundary2.org/2020/07/moira-weigel-palantir-goes-to-the-frankfurt-school/
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lootsauce
Last two paragraphs capture a very interesting dynamic.

"Big data analytics could be said to constitute an authenticity jargon in this
sense: although they treat the data set under analysis as having something
like an unconscious, they eliminate the temporal gaps and spaces of ambiguity
that drive psychoanalytic interpretation. In place of interpretation, data
analytics substitutes correlations that it treats simply as given. To a
machine learning algorithm that has been trained on data sets that include zip
codes and rates of defaulting on mortgage payments, for instance, it does not
matter why mortgagees in a given zip code may have been more likely to default
in the past. Nor will the algorithm that recommends rejecting a loan
application necessarily explain that the zip code was the deciding factor.
Like the existentialist’s illusion of immediate experience these procedures
generate an aura of incontestable self-evidence.

As in Adorno, here, the loss of particular contexts can serve to conceal, and
thus perpetuate, domination. Algorithms take the histories of oppression
embedded in training data and project them into the future, via predictions
that powerful institutions then act on. If the identities constituted in this
way are false, the reifications they generate do real work, and can cause real
harm. And yet, to read these figures historically is to recognize that they
need not come true. This is not an interpretive path that Karp pursues. But
for those of us concerned about the relationship between digital technologies
and justice, this repressed insight of his dissertation is the most critical
to follow."

The official answer to this problem of ML bias is "fairness" research. But
really this is yet another cover for the unquestionable authority of the
algorithm and the data, just this time with the added benefit of an overlay of
the institutions intent. What is the alternative once we stop trusting Google
and Facebook to fairly manipulate the outcome? What when we reject the
authority of the data and the algorithms altogether?

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api
We can't allow algorithms, big data, and "AI" to be used to end-run the rule
of law.

We (the USA) are supposed to be a "nation of laws and not of men." An
algorithm is merely an artifact of human engineering, and so allowing
algorithms to take the place of laws and due process is simply a roundabout
way of putting the engineers of said algorithm into a position of arbitrary
power. This is particularly true if the algorithm is a secret, can be modified
without an audit trail (or can self-modify without auditability), or is
inscrutable. Anything based on "deep learning" and the like is usually at
least two of these three things.

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mgw2017
The author (me, hi) created a PDF you can read here.
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/p9up8atjecn30me/Moira%20Weigel%20%...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/p9up8atjecn30me/Moira%20Weigel%20%E2%80%94%20Palantir%20Goes%20to%20the%20Frankfurt%20School%20_%20boundary%202.pdf?dl=0)

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hisham_hm
Thank you for this article! It's a great read.

I don't regularly check Hacker News, so saw it through the "HN Tooter" account
on Mastodon which forwards links to HN front page articles. Then I was curious
to see what the HN reaction was and went to scroll from the front page and on
the "next page" links... and I couldn't find it anywhere! (even scrolling past
the release date of the article)

I had to use the search feature and sort by date, then it showed up. Was this
post removed from the front page archives or am I missing something?

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sauercloud
cached:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:78nB0nf...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:78nB0nfZ0GEJ:www.boundary2.org/2020/07/moira-
weigel-palantir-goes-to-the-frankfurt-school/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

~~~
msla
Archived:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200710161204/http://webcache.g...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200710161204/http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:78nB0nfZ0GEJ:www.boundary2.org/2020/07/moira-
weigel-palantir-goes-to-the-frankfurt-school/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

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kristopolous
This sounds like the current Frankfurt School is still THE Frankfurt School;
the heady and often quite complicated critiques in leftist thought (Marcuse,
Adorno, etc). I had no idea that was still a thing. There's so much to learn
but sadly only one life to live

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Der_Einzige
For another example of things staying the same far longer than they should
within left-wing thought:

Most of the "leftist cannon" still believes in psychoanalysis or it's
increasingly absurd derivatives (schizoanalysis or analytic psychoanalysis
being good examples).

Not sure what to do about disproven bullshit being peddled as facts by parts
of academia. I shouldn't have to argue with a PH.D in critical terror studies
about the existence of the Oedipus complex...

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eat_veggies
Is schizoanalysis an absurd derivative of psychoanalysis or a rejection of it?

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Der_Einzige
Deleuze might tell you that it's a rejection but it's actually an absurd
derivative of it.

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eat_veggies
Ok you're just asserting these things, and I'd like to hear your reasoning :)

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sjg007
If you find this interesting, there's a podcast by Eric Weinstein called the
Portal and he has a 2+ hr long interview with Thiel. Some of the time they
talk about these concepts of aggression and violence in societal terms,
political correctness and Trump etc... There's a whole lot to unpack out of it
as with this article as well. Maybe Karp's thesis is a framework to do that.

Paul Graham had a recent tweet on training an AI to detect authoritarianism.
It seems such a "KarpBot" would be interesting.

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purplerabbit
Looks like we crashed it

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api
The link doesn't even work yet it keeps getting upvoted... man that's some
headline catnip right there.

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slater
orrr.. folks know how to get the cached version, see link further up

