Alex Karp, the CEO of controversial tech company Palantir, raised eyebrows during a recent live interview with the New York Times. In a viral video of the discussion, Karp defended his company to the Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin, gesturing dramatically with his arms, bouncing up and down on his chair, and struggling to make his point.
Palantir’s X account shared the video on Sunday morning and announced Karp is launching The Neurodivergent Fellowship: “If you find yourself relating to [Karp] in this video — unable to sit still, or thinking faster than you can speak — we encourage you to apply.”
Palantir announced Karp himself would conduct final interviews for the fellowship. In a reply to the first message on X, the company included an application link to the fellowship, which is available in Palantir’s New York City and Washington, D.C. offices.
“The current LLM tech landscape positions [neurodivergent people] to dominate,” according to the application. “Pattern recognition. Non-linear thinking. Hyperfocus. The cognitive traits that make the neurodivergent different are precisely what make them exceptional in an AI-driven world.”
Palantir, a data and analytics company co-founded by conservative “kingmaker” Peter Thiel, was quick to argue that the fellowship is not a DEI initiative.
“Palantir is launching the Neurodivergent Fellowship as a recruitment pathway for exceptional neurodivergent talent,” according to the application, “This is not a diversity initiative. We believe neurodivergent individuals will have a competitive advantage as elite builders of the next technological era, and we’re hiring accordingly for all roles.”
Despite being neurodivergent, I also happen not to be profoundly evil ! So I don’t see myself joining anytime soon…
Dunno man, even the Wammy’s House looks like a more trustworthy “neurodivergent fellowship” than Palantir’s.
“I’m not a POS, I’m neurodivergent…”
Riiiiiiiiight… 🤔
Not mutually exclusive.
Edit: I say this as someone who’s neurospicy.
yeah. i’m fully willing to believe a bunch of these tech ceos are neurodivergent as they claim. HOWEVER. we all know neurodivergent people who don’t weaponize their neurodivergence to justify eugenics, mass surveillance, or just plain being shitty to people. we don’t have to respect your autism excuse when you do something shitty and then ask you why you did that.
So the dude was tweaking on whatever legalized version of cocaine is available this week and then passes it off as neurodivergent. This makes those of us that actually have issues look like hyperactive children. Also fuck Palantir. I’d rather drag my nuts through broken glass than ever be associated with their human rights violation machine. Fucking sickening.
Why the fuck are all the rich assholes tweaked out of their gourds? It speakes volumes that even those at the top of this bullshit society hate it and resort to drugs to cope.
For them it’s probably truly recreational and for fun as opposed to us slaves of society doing it just to fucking cope or blow off some steam.
That was my first thought, dude looked coked up…
The way I read this is that they’re trying to weaponize autism. They see people who are neurodivergent as a resource they can tap into.
All the old Aspies are watching alone from the corner of the room saying to themselves, “wtf is wrong with this guy?”
No thanks I’m good on violating everyone’s 4th amendment rights and identifying targets for a genocide like an absolute criminal traitor asshole
Is the fellowship forming to kick the shit out of this guy for giving a bad name to neurodivergents everywhere?
You have my axe.
And my fidget sword
And my prowbar
Alex Karp’s behavior is much better explained by cocaine. He may be neurodivergent, but he was still high as giraffe pussy.
Don’t give giraffe pussy a bad name, bro.
He did a great job supressing the sniffles.
Hahahahahahahhahahahaah. Dude, I cannot stop laughing!
Woah! That’s pretty high!
I‘m sick and tired of rich schmucks selling their lack of empathy as being neurodivergent. Nah man, you don‘t struggle with social cues. You simply don‘t care about others. That‘s a huge difference.
Technically antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder are neurodivergent…
Those are personality disorders, not forms of neurodivergence.
Wtf is neurodivergence if not a divergence from normal personality and thinking?
They are different things.
Neurodivergent people process information differently but have all the correct parts to process. They may interact with the world in slightly different ways but do not have a personality DEFECT.
People who are narcissists are missing a primary component: empathy for other humans. Their minds are fundamentally different than neurotypical and neurodivergent people.
Are you making this up?
I’m going by the parts of the words: neuro meaning of the mind/brain and divergent meaning deviating from normal. I don’t see why “neurodivergent” wouldn’t include all of ADHD, autism, personality disorders, and mental illness as these are all brain differences.
Yes, they are making this up.
From the point of view of a person without ADHD, an ADHD person is almost retarded. Can’t concentrate, achieve goals.
Or BAD - jumping from a depression to a psychosis, sometimes they are like a wounded deer hiding in their room, sometimes they are running around planning to blitzkrieg the planet, what is this if not a defect. (There’s one woman, I wonder if I should reach her or if I’m having my own BAD psychosis even thinking about that. She’s also not the only woman who can be affected strongly by that decision. In other words, I’m inadequate and unable to control myself and clearly see the reality behind impulses.)
Or, well, an autistic person struggling with hints and cues and aesopean language and unable to deduct reality from superficial signs, - from the point of view of those who can they are pretty much defective. (Also me.)
They are just bunching together a few of Ds as “just different” and the rest as defects. “Disorder” is not a word meaning “just different”. It does mean a defect.
Neurodivergent includes all those categories except the disorders or illnesses. Here’s why:
Things like psychopathy are caused by structural differences in the brain that make sufferers incapable of experiencing the same set of emotions as most people. Many negative behaviors are caused by lack of inhibition or empathy for others.
People with autism and adhd process information differently and respond to the world differently as a result. In severe cases this can lead to an inability to engage but will generally result more in inappropriate engagement.
Behavioral health conditions are a mix of psychological and neurological issues that require a wide variety of interventions.
These are very different things.
Thank you for your explanatory responses. I decided to look up an authoritative definition for myself. According to what I found, it isn’t a medical term and doesn’t have a medical definition, so means whatever people say it means. Which is I guess how language always works, it is just that it is a new word with roots that imply a broader meaning.
The lists generally exclude personality disorders, but this doesn’t seem logical to me, although I am not a neurologist. I thought all brain differences arise or manifest as differences in the brain structure.
https://www.umassp.edu/inclusive-by-design/who-before-how/understanding-disabilities/neurodivergence
https://www.uhhospitals.org/blog/articles/2025/06/what-does-it-mean-to-be-neurodivergent
I do bad things all the time so does that make me a psychopath? Sure I feel bad all the time and bury my guilt under copious amounts of alcohol but it still works don’t it.
I seem to recall hearing that there were genetic/epigenetic components that predispose some folks to those personality disorders. I’m not disagreeing with you and I don’t know if the research I saw was corroborated. I just think it’s an interesting idea that you’re not born with NPD, but you can be more vulnerable to developing it.
I think that what you are noting is that narcissism can be caused by differences in brain structure, like in psychopathy, or by differences in upbringing, like in sociopathy. In the first case, you’re born that way. In the second case, trauma and such made you that way.
He’s definitely neurodivergent and not drug addicted. Definitely.
He’s definitely sitting comfortably in the middle of that Venn
Edit: Lmfao the Palantir account actually started their tweet about this with “While cross-country skiing this morning”
Do they think we’re stupid?
Re edit: It’s a legitimate thing to do when you own so much money.
I assumed it was a euphemism for cocaine.
Cocaine or actual cross country skiing? I guess both work
“While cross-country skiing this morning”
While gliding in his k-hole this morning
They say it’s not a DEI initiative; they just want to get this talent onboard for their business.
Ironically, that’s exactly what DEI initiatives were all about: recognizing that if we let white bros excluded all others from the workplace, like they have in prior decades, we will shut out the majority of the world’s talent, and we should do whatever it takes to make sure everyone can join, work, and truly focus without watching their back all the time.
Or more cynically: privileged talent knows its worth, marginalized talent is undervalued and will thank you for only lightly screwing it
Exactly, not to mention the entire idea of a “tech” bro violated societies norms (it didn’t really they just wore hoodies). But the fact that you had “nerds” succeeding and winning at life seemed to contradict the Don Draper/Frat Bro prototype of success
That honestly started around 60s and by the time of tech bros even receded.
Can’t wait until all these Tech wastes of human garbage finally reach critical mass, self consume, and crawl back under historical rocks.
For the record, using the real issue of nuerodivergence as an excuse for a lack of consciousness or mortality is new low.
Guaranteed Palantir isn’t accepting neurodivergence as an excuse for Jack shit from their non C-suite employees
Sauron’s DEI. Its cool, its not DEI because he thought of it this time.
“Hyperfocus”… just wanna exploit us, those guys
Yeah also hyperfocua is thankfully often one of the earliest symptoms to be dealt with. The name “hyperfocus” sounds great, but when I tell the story of how in college I sat down to write a paper then several hours later was finished, couldn’t tell you anything about it and desperately needed food, water, and to use the restroom but was so exhausted I didn’t know how to prioritize these needs and spent several minutes deciding which to resolve first… Yeah then it sounds like a symptom of a disability rather than some magic power.
I swear I’m sick and tired of people thinking adhd is basically being an attention feruchemist
You forgot to say that the paper in this story can be anything. It can be a short letter you spend hours perfecting just because. Or one paragraph on a subject that somehow seems more magical than the rest of life in this specific moment. It’s not even necessarily something big. You can hyperfocus on drawing and redrawing one icon again and again.
In this case it was just a decent gen ed literature paper but yeah I once literally couldn’t stop reading the Wikipedia article about the evolution of plants when I was unmedicated.
I’m more likely to talk of hyperfocus when it’s things theoretically people would think are good to be unable to stop focusing on like school, work, or learning. This is largely because crashing on the couch doomscrolling instead of eating is something even neurotypicals do these days and because talking about all the nights I spent playing binding of Isaac or civilization with zero capacity to stop and do my damn homework or go to bed make it sound like a failing and like I’m blaming my mental illness.
But yeah, it’s inability to regulate attention and we live in a world in which sophisticated tools for catching and maintaining attention are extremely commonplace and should be more regulated.
attention feruchemist
that’s a cool likeness, never thought of it that way. Would be really cool if it worked like that. Or, well, it would probably get exploited by corporations so you’d just spend all your time off filling your metalmind so maybe it wouldn’t be that cool actually.
Idk I feel like if it actually worked that way we’d get pretty firm negotiations that home and work get separate metalminds at least at decent jobs. And much like how zincminds don’t make you smarter, they just make you equally smart faster, these won’t make you good at your job, just make you solely focused on the stupid thing your boss told you to do.
Also I feel like given how hyperfocus is attention would be more like weight or senses than strength in that filling has benefits too by allowing you to task change and a sudden jolt from tunnel vision
