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John Galt's use of Palentir v0.0.1

So the question is, How would a Randian Hero use Palentir? First let's define what these things really are.

Define Randian Hero

A Randian Hero Archetype is a specific type of Philosopher King inspired by the works of Ayn Rand such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. My current list of definitions of Philosopher King includes,

  1. A Philosopher King is a person of overflowing competence
  2. A Philosopher King is someone who is supposed to wield power, and may choose not to
  3. A philosopher carves their soul into a shape of their design, a philosopher king carves a shape out of their society a. A Philosopher King is someone who will carve a piece of history into a shape of their design
  4. A Philosopher King is someone who defines a paradigm
  5. A Philosopher King is a person of overflowing wisdom
  6. A Philosopher King is someone who bridges the Heavens and the Earth

The first three definitions there, overflowing competence, wielding power, and carving a shape out of ones society embody the Randian Hero archetype.

Define Palentir

There is Palentir the objects in Lord of The Rings and there is Palentir the company named after those objects.

In Lord of the Rings Palentir's function like the crystal balls used by psychics. In Lord of the Rings there are 8 Palentir's and they are used for Scrying, a form of divination where the wielder sees visions inside the medium they are looking in. A single palantír enables its user to see places far off, or events in the past. A person could look into a palantír to communicate with anyone looking into another palantír. They could then see "visions of the things in the mind" of the person looking into the other stone.Source

Then there is Palentir the company. When you go on their website you see quotes like,

  1. We believe in augmenting human intelligence, not replacing it
  2. We make products for human-driven analysis of real-world data
  3. We design technology to help institutions protect liberty
  4. We’re focused on creating the world’s best user experience for working with data, one that empowers people to ask and answer complex questions without requiring them to master querying languages, statistical modeling, or the command line

I wished I had come up with some of that phrasing. The fourth item in that list of quotes strongly resonates with the act of Scrying just like the Palentir's in Lord of the Rings.

There is Palentir the company, which embody's and exports American values of Excellence and Liberty. Then there is the myth of what Palentir the Company is actually up to. Palentir, the Myth, is the interface for the dragnet surveillance infrastructure Edward Snowden exposed in 2014.

Palentir, the myth, involves Mass Surveillance. Privacy and platforms does not exist. All data siting on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, X/Twitter and friends can be queried by Palentir, the myth. Even when platforms use encryption like Signal, WhatsApp, Instagram Messenger, X/Twitter Messenger expose the most important data, the metadata, Metadata is data about data and includes, who is contacting who, when, and size of message are all still available, that data is usually more valuable than the actual contents. Oh and if you are an actual "Person of Interest" they can remotely hack any normal phone, laptop, smart speaker, and smart TV. Palentir the myth, can get nearly any saved message unless a individual deletes them.

Now we arrive at my favorite question, What would you do with a backdoor to the NSA? We can get more specific, How would a Randian Hero like Howard Roark, Rearden, Dagney, Francisco Danconia, and John Galt use Palentir, the myth. They each would have different goals but there is an overarching theme. This question will be answered after a quick detour which is relevant, I swear.

Define Neo Reactionary Politics

First let's define "Reactionary" politics before we define "Neo Reactionary" Politics. I define "Reactionary" as the political phenomenon of action and reaction. Reactionary politics embodies the Hegelian dialectic and the "Myth of Progress",

  • Clan warfare was a reaction to survival of the fittest
  • Religion/Empire was a reaction to Clan Warfare
  • Monotheism and centralzied authority was a reaction to Polytheism
  • Feudalism was a reaction to the collapse of Rome's centralized authority
  • Nazizm was a reaction to Weimar Germany
  • Communism was a reaction to the problems of Capitalism
  • Dataism, the Zeroth law of Robotics, is a reaction to the problems of Modernity

Within a reactionary frame people are reacting to the world that is without the context of Big History. A reactionary sees the problems right in front of them and lacks the bird eye's view. The reactionary sees the narrative but not the meta narrative. The reactionary is involved in the consumption of "The Show" and doesn't care to realize all the work that goes into making and performing it.

Neo reaction takes that bird's eye view of society and history.

A reactionary titles a book like "The End of History and the Last Man". Neo reactionaries look at the enlightenment of the 1600's and go, dam those guys were cringe, we gotta recontextualize what they were talking about with what we learned in the last couple centuries. There's a reason the other phrase for "Neo Reaction" is "Dark Enlightenment"

Post World War II there was a conservative cultural consensus focused on religious life, family, sexual abstinence, and gender roles. A "Progressive" reactionary reacting to that "conservative culture" goes, I love my "free" sex, religion is cringe and hateful, feminism was inevitable, I hate my conservative grandparents, and there are too many humans anyways.

We are already seeing the reaction to the "Progressive Reaction". The "Progressive Reaction" peaked with the Millennials and "The Woke Mind Virus". The Anti/Dark Woke reaction likes "sarcastically" talking about race science, the dating women "Red Pill" resulting in "Cargo Cult Masculinity", and some weird meta ironic form of Fascism.

The neo reactionary goes, I wonder how my great great great grandparents would judge me, religions experiences selection pressures just like species do and therefore contain wisdom, and population demographics are a thing worth talking about. That race question is starting to stress me out. We can already practice designer babies, soon we will likely be able to grow entire babies outside the womb just like at the Hatchery at the beginning of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, we can add Gene's to human embryos via CRISPR Cas9 therefore the capacity to design new Races and even resurrect upgraded Neanderthals is a serious possibility. I hope our civilization is responsible with their new found powers.

There is a reason the Characters of Competence in Atlas Shrugged, which was almost titled "The Strike", disappear and start their own "Break Away Civilization". John Galt and friends were able to take the bird eyes view of history.

Neoreactionary Politics is the type of politics that Philosopher Kings engage in.

What John Galt would do with Palentir The Myth

With access to Palentir, the myth, a character like John Galt, the greatest of the Randian Hero's, would obviously do two things,

  1. Remove access, restrict access, and fabricate data for other people who have access to Palentir, the myth, who are not mission aligned
  2. The mission is to encourage a controlled collapse of civilization on Earth to remove the cultural parasites so civilization can be reborn like a phoenix

This leaves us with two fascinating questions,

What is the most moral way to perform a controlled demolition of the institutions as to reform or remove the cultural parasites?

What shape should the new institutions and cultural competence hierarchies take as to not get consumed by the cultural parasite?

These problems must be solved in parallel, but first we must articulate what this cultural parasite is.

What do you think so far?