I want to talk about the psychology of Elon Musk and why he's doing what he does.

[WarGamer]

It's been said that the genetic urges for human males are f*cking and fighting.

The first urge is pretty much unchanged but the second has adapted as man began to live in communities and developed culture.

What's it like being Elon Musk?

Start with the wealth. Off the chart wealth.

To him... money has become meaningless.

Unlike Bezos and Zuck, he has no yacht and no mega mansion. He sleeps on the floor of the Tesla factory and in a manufactured home on the property of SpaceX in Texas.

He famously works 100 hours a week although I suspect much of that time is playing video games or screwing around on Twitter.

I'm not going to get into his mental health but he seems to be a bit of a man child.

When Musk wakes up in the morning, he looks for something to do. He no longer needs to hunt... for women or possessions.

So what does he do?

He finds things that a) annoy him or b) excite him and he takes action with or against them.

Musk has taken a cultural, societal and political stand because it's the most difficult quest of his life.

And that's POWER. The same urge to build up your player in a video game with new suits and power and abilities.

Musk wants to change the world and put humanity on Mars.

Because he believes ONLY HE can do it.

He's not looking to be the most powerful guy in the room... the company, the town or the State...

He wants to do things that NO ONE in the world can do.

Politics is now his latest "start-up", his latest reason for waking every morning.

It's his new adopted life.

I'm not a Psychiatrist... and didn't even sleep in a Holiday Inn last night...

But Musk seems like a poster child "narcissistic megalomaniac".

He's dangerous because he doesn't care about money or people in general. It's all a game.

To add: net worth is nothing more than a totem for Elon Musk... a monument to how much of a "man" he is... he actually spends very little money. He spends less per year than the average NFL franchise owner or MLB all star pitcher...

[meadowlander]

1. I'd add to this from an autistic perspective -

with the usual qualification that not all autistic people are alike but many do share some common characteristics.

Need for control - many autistic people feel constantly overwhelmed by their environments and strive to achieve a situation where they can control all of the variables up to the extent of their means. Elon has a lot of means, so he is seeking to control a lot of variables. He will quit completely rather than not be in complete control.

Obsessive pattern recognition - many autistic brains are wired to find obscure connections in massive sets of data. This is what attracts Elon to AI - if he can gather all the data, he thinks he can find something in it that nobody else can. Many autistic people are also attracted to conspiracy theories like catnip because it involves chewing through a lot of information to glean the most obscure possible truth. Spending all day on Twitter marinating in this bullshit has largely broken Elon's brain.

All consuming special interests - once they find one of these, many autistic people will seek to learn everything they possibly can about them and will forgo sleeping, eating and relationships in their quest for total expertise. They will go about acquiring this information in a spikey, inconsistent, trees rather than forest way, deep diving into particularly areas of interest instead of attacking knowledge acquisition systematically. They prefer to be self-taught, following their interests, instead of listening to a teacher. Unfortunately, Elon has decided our government is his special interest for now and is starting with the social security code instead of "how a bill becomes a law".

Preference for logic and efficiency over human relationships - autistic people can be great at cutting through the bullshit and getting to the core issue as well as finding the most efficient way to solve a problem. The considerations of other people (and particularly their feelings) are secondary. In some ways, some autistic people struggle with feeling real and with acknowledging the reality of other peoples' existence. He's not a sadist getting off on firing people. They simply don't have any intrinsic value for him in the face of the potential to make a system work as efficiently as possible. Although he does potentially get off a bit on taking petty revenge on regulators who have made his life difficult in the past.

Not caring about material possessions is also an autistic thing. I suspect if he was dead broke and still had the opportunity he would forgo a salary to keep doing what he is doing. He is driven by his ego - to be the smartest person in the room, the one in charge, and the one with the answers nobody else has.

[WarGamer]

2. magnificent thoughts... and sooo well written. Thank You!!!

Confirms a lot of what I was thinking but with factual observations.

*DU is at it's best when it's educational.

[yardwork]

5. I would add that a person's beliefs and values determine how their personality is expressed.

I've had the privilege to work with many brilliant scientists who I think are on the spectrum. They are motivated by a desire to cure diseases and make the world a better place. In their cases, being autistic makes it possible for them to discover connections that others don't see. They are relentless and tireless in their work.

Musk is a deeply racist and misogynistic person. His parents were white supremacists who moved to South Africa because they admired apartheid. I think that motivates Musk. He believes that white people are superior and others are inferior, and he is on a quest to remake the U.S. to be like Nazi Germany.

Musk is joined in this mission by a number of other billionaires from South Africa, and by JD Vance. They are stone cold racists and that's important to remember.

[meadowlander]

8. Yes, absolutely.

Nothing about how Elon is is an inevitable consequence of being autistic. But I can see how he has gone about being a terrible person in a very autistic way.

I also forgot to add that "black and white thinking" is another typical autistic trait. This feeds into "there are only two genders and nothing in between" which is fueling Elon's transphobic obsessions. Also "men are inherently this way, women are that way - it's science, end of story" or "create classification - race; assign characteristics - X, Y, Z".

You can train yourself not to think this way if you are autistic and self-aware but potentially autistic people are more prone to fall into this way of thinking and Elon has never really had a reason to examine his core assumptions about life and acknowledge complexity or grey areas. Instead of admitting he was wrong, he can retreat to the internet where there are a nearly infinite number of people who are wrong in the same way who can reinforce his original assumptions.

[yardwork]

9. Very well said!

"...he has gone about being a terrible person in a very autistic way."

And that's a good point about binary thinking.

I just wanted to make the point that there's nothing about being autistic that predisposes a person to being selfish or evil.

However, if a selfish, evil person happens to be autistic, they're going to go about being evil in some predictable ways.

Contrast Musk to RFK, Jr., who is also evil but probably not autistic. Look at how Bob goes about being evil - his expression is emotional. He believes random things that "feel" good to him. He lacks intellectual curiosity. Instead, he believes dumb things he's told just because they feel right to him. He doesn't bother to learn more. Just runs with it.

[GreatGazoo]

3. "Musk wants to change the world and put humanity on Mars. "

That wasn't Musk's idea. That's a USA vs China thing.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/09/china/china-mars-mission-tianwen-3-intl-hnk/index.html

[Blue Full Moon]

10. His ex wife said he is willing to go bankrupt to do so

He is also willing to bankrupt the USA to do so. It is uninhabitable. James Loveland said it would be better if they would just build compounds in Antarctica. At least the air is breathable.

[Ping Tung]

4. Thereapist to Musk: "My recptionist has an interesting theory on your case. She thinks you're an asshole."

[Sogo]

6. I've often thought he is a lot like TSF....i.e., narcissistic,

but I don't know enough about psychiatry to give any details. I can't imagine that at some point the two of them will clash big time.

[alarimer]

7. He is an asshole

I don't really care why.

He comes from a wealthy piece of shit family; apples never fall far from the tree.

[BigmanPigman]

11. He and tRump are immature sadists.

They love to hurt anyone and anything they can...financially, physically, mentally and emotionally.
Jimmy Kimmel said tRump has only two adjectives...dumb or evil. I agree.

[Meowmee]

12. He is a psychopath/ sociopath

A skilled con artist and a crook etc. That is all I need to know. I don’t believe he’s autistic for one second either. That’s a lie. He’s also a drug addict who is taking psychedelics, ketamine and who knows what else on a regular basis.