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Comment by scotty79 | Hacker News Reader

> Gospel

People are so desperately wanting to believe that AI will give them the revealed truth. Such systems should be named "Racist Uncle Dave" because they hallucinate some answer everytime they open their virtual mouths with some probability of being somewhat correct this time.

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I’ve been hanging around some MBA types lately, and I’m coming to realize the product doesn’t actually have to perform to high specs like engineers would demand. Palantir is selling a “story” that their AI system magically decreases casualties and finds good targets, and it’s got firm numbers printed in the console (that could be completely wrong) but that is more convincing to MBA’s than any wishy intuition. So the MBA’s buy into the marketing, and the executors are buying into offloading their conscience.

please. the last people that would buy into any kind of marketing are MBAs because they actually study marketing among other things during their 2 years of obtaining an MBA.

there is no perfect product, I don't know how well Palantir AI works, but I would be surprised it doesn't work at all

You're right. MBA's are immune from marketing or sales tactics. Don't tell Mckinsey.

McKinsey hires top of the class people at top schools and pays them top dollar. If all they needed was marketing or sales, they could go to University of Nowhere and hire good looking tall people to do sales.

Psychological research shows that bulshitters are easiest to bullshit.

source? most psychological research doesn't replicate

Here's something about it.

https://www.psypost.org/new-study-suggests-you-can-bullshit-...

I'm sure you can find more.

"Bullshit receptivity and bullshitting frequency are both negatively associated with cognitive ability and analytic thinking."

from your link. Given that it's pretty hard to get into a top MBA program, I think we can put this nonsense to bed.

It's not hard because of cognitive ability required.

It's hard because it's expensive fluff bs for jobs that have it as requirement. Useless without a position where you can exploit having MBA diploma.

There's a case in Poland that one "university" was giving MBAs like candies to party officers so they can have some higher education to occupy well paid leadership positions in publicly owned companies.

Nobody said MBAs buying Palantir or whatever came from "top" MBA programs. In Poland they would come from this "university".

Regardless, I don't think you can make a reasonable case that MBAs in general are such low IQ people that they are buying Palantir software for no reason other than marketing or sales. It's much more likely that Palantir software actually works at least somewhat well. Palantir has a 50 billion dollar market cap. You don't get to that level on marketing alone

It's not about low IQ I think. It's more about a belief that you can create reality with words.

Betnie Madoff was $64 billion and he had nothing but words. I'm sure Palantir has a bit more, but not by much.

Bernie Madoff was a fraud, which is an unrelated thing to this convo

Palantir is a real company. "I am sure Palantir has a bit more but not by much". Why are you so sure?

Overselling supposedly magic software is not a kind of fraud?

I said that "I'm sure" that Palantir has a bit more than Bernie because they actually produced some software, I believe.

"Not by much" was my guess given my experience of living 45 years on this planet through AI winter and spring (multiple?), working with software and computers. Experiencing how much of marketing is straight up lies. Seeing firsthand how government spends money on future predicting software that doesn't actually accurately predict anything, just presents results of some modelling.

But that's just my guess. Maybe it is magic this time. After all my expectations were contradicted once already with ChatGPT. Not strongly, but somewhat.

"Overselling supposedly magic software is not a kind of fraud?". I suggest googling what fraud means. Marketing is most definitely not fraud and has nothing to do with fraud. You are making circular arguments. Palantir is a 50 bln dollar company and you provided exactly zero evidence that they are "overselling supposedly magic software" in other words you have no idea what you are talking about specifically with respect to Palantir. I never understand why people do this. Why make these strong claims if it turns out you just don't know ?

Sorry, were you expecting to obtain unassailable secret evidence against 50bln dollar scheme from a random commenter on the internet? Apologies for not measuring up to your expectations. Please notify me once you obtain unassailable evidence that this scheme is in fact not a (colloquially) fraud i.e. it's worth what was spent on it.

no, I was expecting any evidence, some evidence.

How about involvement of Palantir in Israel?

I wonder if they were a part of decision making process that caused Isreal to methodically bomb Central World Kitchen aid convoy manned with foreign volunteers. We'll never know because if they were this information won't be publicized because of relationships between Isreal, US and business.

When you read up on Palantir budiness in Israel there are question being raised why money is funneled back to a US corporation instead of developing local Isreali competence in processing intel.

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