What happens to a society when its smartest teenagers decide college isn’t worth the time and companies start agreeing with them? Palantir just tried something most people thought was unthinkable. It told high school students to skip college, walk past the gatekeepers, and start working on real-world national-security and tech problems at eighteen. Five hundred teens applied. Twenty-two got in. Some turned down places at Ivy League schools. One even walked away from a full-ride scholarship backed by the Department of Defense. Why? Because the message hit a nerve: the belief that college has stopped rewarding merit and started rewarding compliance. These fellows were thrown into seminars on Western civilization, leadership, and U.S. history. They took notes for the first time in their lives. They visited Gettysburg. They debated whether the West is still worth defending. Then they were dropped into live product teams handling hospitals, defense clients, government agencies — real stakes, real pressure. And something happened that no university can replicate. They saw what it feels like when a company trusts them on day three more than a college would trust them in year three. Parents panicked. Counselors discouraged them. Friends told them they were insane. But every generation has a moment where the ground shifts. This might be one of those moments. So here’s the real question behind the question: If elite companies start grooming talent straight out of high school, and young people start choosing mastery over lectures, how long until the traditional college path stops being the default and becomes the backup plan?

I’ve never seen this much hype around FSD before. V14 feels like the hump we’re finally getting over. Anyone else?