The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 17 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Karp: No expert class has been right about anything in 20 years
“I can't think of any expert class that's been right about anything substantive in the last 20 years.”
Karp: Financial analysts lack common sense and never admit being wrong
“It's hard to be fair to the total bereft of common sense, and in, in practice, not particularly honest, analyst expert class, not because they're wrong the first time, but primarily because they can't admit they were wrong the first time when they're wrong the…”
Karp: Global spread of American values is downstream of military superiority
“All the stuff you're learning at Berkeley about people are just going to inherently absorb American values is really just downstream from our military superiority.”
Karp: LLMs are commodities and orchestration is far more valuable
“Everyone's saying LLMs are going to solve all these problems, but I believed, and it turns out that LLMs are commodity products, and orchestration would be much more valuable than the product themselves.”
Karp: Unconventional, stubborn visions are the only way to change the world
“The experts are like, you know, like, this isn't safe because in almost all cases this doesn't work. Yeah, they're right, but in the one case where you change the world, it's the only way it can work.”
Karp: Two-year US fentanyl deaths exceed all military combat deaths since WWII
“In the last two years, more people have died of fentanyl than every single person who's died as a soldier since World War II.”
Karp: Germany and Norway do not hire based on meritocracy
“In Europe, if, when we, I was involved in hiring at this institute I worked at, And one of the biggest problems was I was always like, of course we need to hire the best person. That's not the way it works in Germany or Norway. Like the best person doesn't get…”
Karp: Palantir's primary mission is deterrence to prevent American combat casualties
“The primary purpose of Pallinger is to be so dominant that those people don't have to fight and die because everyone knows you're going to die 10 times more if you attack America.”
Karp: Europeans doubt AI and hope American AI products fail
“Europe. They're still like, it doesn't work, but hopefully this will fail because it's all American products.”
Karp: Palantir refuses standard sales calls for Maven with foreign governments
“I mean, I tell, I'm telling governments all over the world, look, we're not showing up to do a sales call for Maven. You know, it works. We know it works. Show up at my office, explain to us how you're going to make this easy for us because we don't have huge …”
Karp: Most special operations forces in the world use Palantir's Gaia
“Gaia, the product that most special operations use in the world.”
Karp: Palantir delivered Sequoia-level venture returns to ordinary public investors
“We gave venture returns, not just venture returns. We gave venture returns as if you're like, you know, I don't know, you're like Peter Thiel, Sequoia, Coastal returns. To the average person who is willing to do their own work and stand up against kind of trie…”
Karp: Most software companies build addictive lock-in products, not what clients need
“What you're supposed to be doing software is build the client that the client gets addicted to, not the one they need. And like, this is like, and this is absolutely a truism in, in, in software development of any kind.”
Karp: Palantir software elevates American factory workers to Japanese engineer capacity
“We can use foundry and ontology to bring out the advantages of American worker and give them the capacity to roughly work like a Japanese engineer.”
Karp: Corporate aging is directly driven by organizational hierarchy layers
“The rate of age or anti-aging is directly correlated with the layers of hierarchy.”
Karp: Dyslexics outperform today because non-playbook environments reward invention
“I think some of the reasons why dyslexics are so outperformant now is that we're in a non-playbook world, and the playbook's not that valuable, but if you're dyslexic, you can't You can't follow the playbook, or only in the third rate way, so you invent new an…”
Karp: Exhumed his childhood dog's remains to rebury near his current house
“So I through all sorts of ways got in touch with the person who bought the house that was foresold during the divorce and person was very generous and for lots of reasons agreed to have me exhume their whole yard, and then I took Rosita, and now I'm yeah, I ha…”