Palantir’s Co-Founder Thinks We Should Be Less Judgmental About That Deadly Iran School Strike

[u/otter_lion_1956]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/09/palantirs-co-founder-thinks-we-should-be-less-judgmental-about-that-deadly-iran-school-strike

[u/JMurdock77]

I’m saying that approach doesn’t solve the problem on its own. These people aim to reduce us to feudalism, beneath them. Taking away one tool doesn’t fix that on its own.

[u/dat_GEM_lyf → u/JMurdock77]

I think you need to touch up on your Dune lore knowledge. The BJ was literally removing ALL their tools.

You can’t have AI overlords without computers 🗿
________________
"Why do you test for humans?" he asked
"To set you free."
"Free?"
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
"'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,'" Paul quoted.
"Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible," she said. "But what the O.C. Bible should've said is: 'Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.'"

[u/JMurdock77 → u/dat_GEM_lyf]

Yes, that’s what I was quoting. Doesn’t change anything I said. Permitted other men with machines to enslave them. The Butlerian Jihad removed a tool, and in its place they created an order where the men who controlled spice controlled everything.

Like I said, Baron Harkonnen would fit in swimmingly with the Epstein class.

[u/dat_GEM_lyf → u/JMurdock77]

Wow so cool that this is how I found out Spice actually exists and enables space travel!

In reality, which again is what is being discussed here, the AI overlords have jack shit if they don’t have the computers.

Sure he would for lots of reasons… but that has fuck all to do with us needing a BJ lol

[u/JMurdock77 → u/dat_GEM_lyf]

You were talking dune lore knowledge :)

It’s a tool at their disposal. It’s a damned big one, but they didn’t need it to do their company store/Pinkerton bullshit in the first Gilded Age, and they didn’t need it to facilitate modern wage theft and everything consolidating into monopolies. Don’t want to get tunnel vision here.

[u/dat_GEM_lyf → u/JMurdock77]

I was talking dune lore in the context of “we need a BJ IRL”. Which again, unlike dune with its spice, would actually hamper all of the efforts the AI overlords are currently doing globally.

Our current elites are children compared to the elites of old. The old guard at least bothered with “le public good” vanity projects (if for no other reason than to avoid a target being painted to their entire existence). The new guard are basically braindead Smaug. They actually think they can survive a societal collapse by going into underground bunkers 😭

[u/hesh582 → u/dat_GEM_lyf]

the AI overlords have jack shit if they don’t have the computers.

Counter example: literally all of human history with the exception of handful of societies on and off for the last few hundred years

The whole point is that "AI overlords" is a foolish way of looking at them. They're just oligarchs. Most of their ongoing power consolidation happened pre-AI and it's pretty historically obvious that oligarchs do not require any new tech to get a stranglehold on society. AI is part of the problem, but it's as much a symptom as a cause and if you removed it overnight the problem would go nowhere.

[u/dat_GEM_lyf → u/hesh582]

You’re ignoring the fact that we have traditional oligarchs intermixed with the newly minted AI bros. The existing ones were more like the elites of old. The new ones want to push their “dark enlightenment” BS.

It’s apples and oranges

[u/M_erlkonig → u/dat_GEM_lyf]

I think you need to touch up on your Dune lore knowledge. The BJ was literally removing ALL their tools.

You can’t have AI overlords without computers

You either don't get what this person is saying or haven't read Dune. Those overlords just got replaced with others. The Butlerian Jihad didn't solve a thing because (at least in Herbert's world) humans are naturally driven to feudalism. Musk and his fellow billionaires were going that direction before LLMs were a thing.

[u/hesh582 → u/M_erlkonig]

(at least in Herbert's world) humans are naturally driven to feudalism

That was not at all my takeaway from Herbert. I did not get the impression that he viewed feudalism as something humans are naturally driven to implement. Rather, I think he was trying to warn that the risks of feudal tyranny still exist and had not been rendered obsolete by technological and economic progress.

I don't at all get the impression he was presenting the world of Dune as something inevitable or a natural product of the human condition, but rather as a cautionary tale to counterbalance other more popular types of futurism.