When Philosophers Turn Bad

The Alex Karp Story

I’m about to start my 22nd year teaching philosophy. As a professional philosopher, I always have concern for the integrity and quality of the field as a whole. Because of this, I get a bit angry when I see or hear it highlighted that some billionaire, or other person with great power who is fucking up the world, has a degree in philosophy. Their study of philosophy seems to be highlighted to give this person an air of great intelligence or deep insight which then suggests that we should take them seriously or respect that they know something most others don’t. Ironic, because most universities these days treat us like shit. But I remember years ago reading that Rupert Murdoch’s favourite son, Lachlan, had a degree in philosophy and my heart sank. We all know how he turned out.

Now there’s another corporate billionaire on the loose who, it is often pointed out, has a degree in philosophy. In fact, a new book has emerged about about him titled, The Philosopher in the Valley, written by Michael Steinberger. His name is Alex Karp and he is the CEO of Palantir, the now huge global data analytic company used by many governments and companies around the world to help them predict the future. Not only does Karp have a degree in philosophy from Haverford Liberal Arts College, but he has quite an impressive pedigree having completed his PhD at Goethe University in Germany. One of Germany’s greatest living philosophers, Jurgen Habermas had some input into his dissertation and also impressively, he wrote it in German.

Karp identifies as a Jew and in his dissertation, he looked at the concept of ‘secondary anti-semitism’. This referred to the growing contempt Germans were feeling in the late 20th C. for having to feel guilty all of the time for the holocaust. From what I understand from Steinberger, Karp argued that this was a sign of fascism re-emerging in Germany. What is clear from Steinberger’s account is that for most of his life, Karp was a ‘Leftie’. His family was Left-wing and his education was influenced by Left leaning academics. From recent interviews I have seen, he now spends most of his time criticizing intellectuals on the Left. I’m sure that if by some miracle he read this article he would denigrate me. His political affiliations are now less clear with him being described as anything from a non-woke socialist to a classic liberal to a fascist.

What is clear these days is that despite voting for Hillary Clinton and giving financial support to Biden, he now supports Trump. He says that his support for Trump is based on two policy areas, immigration and deterrence. Apart from his contempt for wokeness, his turn against the Left was due to their failure to secure the borders and what he perceives as their failure to protect the West from its enemies. His position is that the West is superior to all other cultures and influenced by Samuel Huntington, he argues that the West has dominated not because of its values or ideology, but from its superior ability to engage in organized violence. Therefore, he supports boosting the West’s (mainly America’s) lethal military capabilities to strike fear in the hearts of the other.

Because of this, much of Palantir’s success has been due to their close ties to the military and CIA. In fact, he is highly critical of what he sees is other tech companies reluctance to be involved with the military and in particular, weapons development. Karp seems prepared to have his company support the invention and development of whatever weapon is required to suppress the rise of any culture that threatens the West. There does not appear to be any limit to what he would condone for the purpose of deterrence (as well as controlling immigration with his support for ICE). Of course, part of this is also the central role Palantir plays in surveillance and intelligence gathering and analysis.

So why do I have a problem with him? Well, my problem is that after all of his years studying philosophy under the tutelage of some pretty good philosophers, Karp seems to have totally missed the point of a philosophical education. Instead of coming out of that process deeply understanding his relatedness to all living creatures and through that, being able to confront and transcend his fears, Karp seems to be alienated and consumed by fear.

You get a good sense of this right at the start of Steinberger’s book. He describes Karp being out running (he’s big into exercise, something we have in common). Karp’s not running on his own though. He’s surrounded and followed on bikes by Norwegian ex-special forces soldiers, as well as a big black SUV containing more security. We learn about his security detail which includes ‘five Norwegians, a handful of Americans, a couple of Austrians, an Irishman, and a Scot.’ Steinberger describes being in Karp’s house with all of its staff and security personnel, as like being in a ‘Bond villain’s lair.’ The key to Karp’s motivations lie, I argue, in the title Steinberger gives to his Prologue in the book, ‘Making the World Safe for Himself.’

Yes, from what I understand from reading about this guy and watching his interviews, he, like most of his other billionaire tech bros, is trying to make the world safe for himself. His insecurity probably comes from his history of dyslexia and his obvious ADHD. I saw a recent interview with him and he could not sit still in his chair for more than a few seconds. The more excited he got about telling everyone how right he was about everything, the more he would contort himself in his chair like Jiminy Glick on speed. With his enormous wealth, the world has become a plaything for Karp. But for him, it is not a safe one and so it must be made safe.

What I’ve observed to be the biggest problem for Karp and several other tech bros, is other human beings and their complexity and unpredictability. Like his mate, Peter Thiel, he has decided that we humans are just too stupid and dangerous to be trusted to fix the problems we have created and he may have a point there. Philosophers, going back to Plato, always have issues with the relative stupidity of the masses. But this only becomes a problem if you lack empathy and compassion, or you lack a sense of connection with humanity. With their lack of connection, the tech bros have recognized that their technologies, particularly AI, have the potential to now achieve what many have only dreamed of, the total manipulation and control of the behaviour of human beings, the most complex processes in the universe that we know of. Through Palantir, Karp can have the ultimate power of engineering a world in which he can finally feel safe and secure.

This to me is not a place Karp should have arrived at after studying philosophy, which says to me that studying philosophy isn’t enough if you lack the maturity or self-esteem to comprehend and apply its message. Karp to me appears paranoid, fearful, aggressive, intolerant, arrogant, judgmental and impatient, all qualities that suggest a failed or interrupted education in philosophy. He is apparently prepared to use all of humanity and kill many of us, as the instruments for creating his vision. His redeeming qualities seem to be that he has a good sense of humour and he likes to engage in argument (although he insists that he’s right and everyone will eventually realize it).

So where should Karp be in his development, or at least be going? Here I want to draw on a couple of philosophers who influenced me. Many years ago now, when I was researching my PhD, I read some of the work of Buddhist philosopher and psychologist, Ken Wilber. Two things Wilber said have stayed with me. One is his anti-reductionist view that if you want to understand consciousness, talk to one. The other is his claim that with great depth comes less span.

This was said in the context of developing wisdom. Wilber makes a historical claim that there have only ever been a handful of people on the planet at any time who have made the effort and have the capability to gain deep insight into the nature of existence. These are the great sages who the rest of humanity rely upon to show the way to a good life. I was also influenced by Wilber’s views on the path to becoming a sage. This is the Buddhist-inspired process of transcending life-stages, particularly ego-centric ones and reaching the stage of pure emptiness, the realization that all is related. But what Wilber helped reveal to me was that this is not just a Buddhist process, but that there is convergence within the history of developmental psychology across many traditions about what a good human development process looks like and the levels we should aspire to reach.

Wilber’s argument that with great depth comes less span was challenging for me because in my Thesis I was arguing for strong democracy, which requires civic education designed to increase depth and span across societies. But if it’s true that we can only have a few wise ones guiding us, Karp is not one of them because he lacks transcendence and is trapped in highly abstract, egocentric stages. Karp represents a huge problem for humanity today in that our rich and powerful thought leaders, even ones with philosophy degrees, are retarded in their development and what mature, wise sages still exist are completely ignored. This has created a world in which there is little depth and little span.

Another philosopher I read years ago and who influences me is Canadian, John Ralston-Saul, particularly his book Equilibrium. He argues that humanity is always searching for perfect balance but we are continually frustrated by our inability to achieve it. That’s because achieving balance is a process, not a point. This frustration leads to us no longer wanting to waste our time on a futile endeavour and instead look for comforting certainty in one extreme or another. For Ralston-Saul, this leads to a world in which there is dogmatic certainty plus application. Neoliberalism is a good example. This largely discredited theory is presented as the only alternative, so rather than throw it out we keep fiddling with it to try to make it work. I think the expression is ‘putting lipstick on a pig.’ Our frustration with not finding the perfect balance leads to us not challenging the orthodoxy.

One can sense this frustration among the tech billionaires like Karp. They are impatient and have given up, or refuse to waste their precious time on the hard work of finding complex solutions to complex problems. They instead prefer to reduce and over-simplify and wrap our future up in their nice neat, dogmatic bow. This totalitarian, deterministic future of complete control of human beings is one that won’t be challenged, because Karp is right about everything. Instead, it will be endlessly fiddled with in its application until they make it right. Or at least, until the AI makes it right.

My argument here is that Karp, despite having a philosophy degree and a PhD from Goethe University, is no philosopher. That’s because he is not on the path to enlightenment and greater wisdom. The path where you come to understand yourself as one with the universe and develop your empathy and compassion for others. He is not a lover of wisdom. He lives in fear of others and seeks to impede other’s paths to wisdom to protect himself and his privilege and position of authority. He seeks to have others fear him by creating weapons of mass destruction and being prepared to use them. He seeks to take away your privacy and agency and reduce you to an instrument. Then weirdly, as a Jew, he talks of the higher power of God and so he has even failed to question and transcend his own fantastic abstractions.

Karp and his billionaire mates are not today’s great sages. They are frightened and insecure young boys. They are destructive pretenders with degrees who have not earned any more serious attention or respect than anyone else.