Trying to understand Elon Musks shift in personality or "radicalization".

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, NewKidOnTheBlock said:

Colonizing and terraforming a few dead planets or other objects in our solar system would probably be a good choice for us in that regard, as we would no longer be entirely dependent on a single planet for survival.

This is not a serious solution to any of mankind problems.

Life on Mars will be utterly miserable if not simply impossible. Musk's whole Mars project will be a spectacular failure and will not help mankind. But it sure is a nice fantasy to keep everyone working.

The resources being poured into the Mars project would be much better applied to improving Earth. If you want a place to colonize and terraform, go colonize Antarctica or the Sahara. Both are far more pleasant than Mars. Mars is a disgusting barren wasteland.

Edited March 9 by Leo Gura

[Girzo]

29 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The resources being poured into the Mars project would be much better applied to improving Earth. If you want a place to colonize and terraform, go colonize Antarctica or the Sahara. Both are far more pleasant than Mars. Mars is a disgusting barren wasteland.

A funny thing is, like no-one ever made a self-sustaining mini biome even here on Earth, much less in outer space. Have you ever read about Bioshpere 2? One of the engineers from that project is the publisher for Alexander Shulgin's PiHKAL book.

[gambler]

50 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

This is not a serious solution to any of mankind problems.

Life on Mars will be utterly miserable if not simply impossible. Musk's whole Mars project will be spectacular failure and will not help mankind. But it sure is a nice fantasy to keep everyone working.

The resources being poured into the Mars project would be much better applied to improving Earth. If you want a place to colonize and terraform, go colonize Antarctica or the Sahara. Both are far more pleasant than Mars. Mars is a disgusting barren wasteland.

We badly need to terraform the MENA deserts. The entire region is undergoing rapid desertification, and the hot climate is steadily increasing. It's already becoming harder to sustain human life in some vulnerable areas, like in Mauritania for instance.

Edited March 9 by gambler

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Girzo said:

Have you ever read about Bioshpere 2?

Yup

1 hour ago, gambler said:

We badly need to terraform the MENA deserts. The entire region is undergoing rapid desertification, and the hot climate is steadily increasing. It's already becoming harder to sustain human life in some vulnerable areas, like in Mauritania for instance.

Earth has enormous terraforming opportunities. I don't know why Musk is not focusing on that instead of Mars.

We can turn Earth into a tropical paradise. We can build entire new continents.

Edited March 9 by Leo Gura

[Inliytened1]

On 3/8/2025 at 0:29 PM, Leo Gura said:

He def got radicalized. He is at war now with wokeness. Before he was not.

The reason Musk went to war with wokeness is because he realized wokeness was threatening his desire for absolute power. Wokeness requires sharing of power. Musk wants to operate like a king.

Musk has genuine compassion, but it is completely intertwined with his ego and need for power. So he will rationalize to himself that whatever he's doing is the highest good and therefore the most compassionate path.

Musk cares about doing good, but only in ways that allow him to be king and get his way.

What stage would you place him in on the spiral.  This need for power should definitely drive him down a notch, while his need to do good and his intellect and other skills allow him to excel in carrying this out along with his successes in business.  Yet the ego aspect you elude to seems to drive his level on the spiral down since you feel he is doing this out of selfishness and the need to exalt him first. 

 

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

What stage would you place him in on the spiral.

Orange

[Inliytened1]

7 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Orange

Spiral dynamics seems limited in its ability to actually gage a person on an individual level.   Yes  its supposed to account for that, but it doesn't here.  I think his strong need to do good should place him at a higher level, especially considering his intellect.  He's more complex than Trump with regards to his intellect and his ability to come off as a good guy.  Trump doesn't have that skillset.  Yet, his need for power seems to contradict or override this, somewhat negating it.  This is a problem, yet if the society is able to experience increased good after all is said and done, then we'll, there is something to that too.

Edited March 9 by Inliytened1

[Leo Gura]

16 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

Spiral dynamics seems limited

Yes. It is limited.

Quote

I think his strong need to do good should place him at a higher level, especially considering his intellect. 

This is not a good argument.

Why are you assuming Orange cannot have a strong desire to do good? Any stage can have that. The question is what "good" means. One's notions of good is relative to one's stage. Also the key is HOW ones goes about doing that good. Whatever Musk's vision of the good, the fact is that HOW he plans to go about is through top-down king-like control. He is incapable of sharing power. This clearly shows that he has yet to integrate Green.

Musk's intellect is nothing unusual for Orange. Orange people can be highly intelligent in a technical sense. Orange makes for a good CEO. But that CEO mindset is not robust enough to deal with higher collective social problems.

You think Hitler or Bin Landen didn't have a strong desire to do good? The issue is that one's stage of development determines what that means and how egoically that will play out. Bin Landen's vision of good meant blowing up buildings. Musk's vision of good means blowing up government bureaucracy without even understanding what it does. Neither is intelligent.

Quote

He's more complex than Trump with regards to his intellect and his ability to come off as a good guy.  Trump doesn't have that skillset.

Trump is a poor standard to compare against. Trump is particularly toxic and broken. Trump isn't just pure Orange, he has weird Red aspects too. So, yeah, Musk is more evolved than Trump, but that doesn't mean much because Trump is as low as the bar can be set.

Do not assume that Orange means a person resembles Trump. This is an insult to most Orange people. Study some healthy examples of Orange people.

Edited March 9 by Leo Gura

[Inliytened1]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes. It is limited.

This is not a good argument.

Why are you assuming Orange cannot have a strong desire to do good? Any stage can have that. The question is what "good" means. One's notions of good is relative to one's stage. Also the key is HOW ones goes about doing that good. Whatever Musk's vision of the good, the fact is that HOW he plans to go about is through top-down king-like control. He is incapable of sharing power. This clearly shows that he has yet to integrate Green.

Musk's intellect is nothing usual for Orange. Orange people can be highly intelligent in a technical sense.

Trump is a poor standard to compare against. Trump is particularly toxic and broken. Trump isn't just pure Orange, he has weird Red aspects too. So, yeah, Musk is more evolved than Trump, but that doesn't mean much because Trump is a low as the bar can be set.

Excellent. 

[Leo Gura]

The trouble with the world is that everyone is so busy doing good that no one stops to appreciate how relative good is. How their finite and biased sense of good is hurting others.

That's precisely why democracy is so crucial. Democracy is the recognition that everyone has a different notion of good, which requires a mechanism for integration.

Edited March 10 by Leo Gura

[Inliytened1]

@Leo Gura seems like he runs company's like a dictator too.  Thats top of Orange.  My previous company before I started my own business was filled with these kind of egomaniacs.

[PurpleTree]

I just find the Elon quite boring 

There’s not much to understand imo.

He’s mostly an automaton.

Even the way he talks is boring.

4chan troll type guy on the spectrum.

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

@Leo Gura seems like he runs company's like a dictator too.  Thats top of Orange.  My previous company before I started my own business was filled with these kind of egomaniacs.

Yes. The key insight that these Tech Bro CEOs are missing is that running a government and solving global social issues is NOT like running a corporation. These people fundamentally do not understand what democracy is and why it is so important and difficult. A CEO doesn't understand democracy because his job depends on him not understanding it.

Edited March 9 by Leo Gura

[Inliytened1]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The whole trouble with the world is that everyone is so busy doing good that no one stops to appreciate who relative good is.

Well if reality is Absolutely relative, which it is, then really Good here is what's best for society as a whole meaning not just the US but the whole world.  Problem with guys like Musk and Trump is Good is for the US, which they have made their identity.   And even then Good for the US will first benefit the largest aspects of their own identity, which is their ego.

Edited March 9 by Inliytened1

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

Good here is what's best for society as a whole meaning not just the US but the whole world.

But this is exactly what's at issue. Half the world doesn't want a politics which is global. They deride it as "globalism". Their level of development is merely national. They want nationalist politics, with every nation against every other nation. Where Canada and Mexico are America's enemies. That's Trumpism in a nutshell.

Edited March 9 by Leo Gura

[Inliytened1]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

But this is exactly what's at issue. Half the world doesn't want a politics which is global. They deride it as "globalism". Their level of development is merely national. They want nationalist politics, with every nation against every other nation.

Yes that's the whole issue.  Good is for self.

[Inliytened1]

15 minutes ago, PurpleTree said:

I just find the Elon quite boring 

There’s not much to understand imo.

He’s mostly an automaton.

Even the way he talks is boring.

4chan troll type guy on the spectrum.

Think of it this way..he has way way more ambition than the average joe- and I'm sure he had some financing in the beginning.   He is a visionary when it comes to technology - you can't take that away from him.  Most of us have just enough ambition to make breakfast.  We may have had the same insights but maybe we just didn't care.   Because money and wealth weren't that important to us.  Or we didnt possess greatness.  But Musk's ambition - what was the reasoning behind it? Was it to help society - was it greatness?  or was it to help himself? Well..it wasnt greatness...At least that's the argument.  He's interesting because he was such a visionary when it came to tech, but because of his mindset, in government his true colors are really coming alive.  His selfishness and need for power.

[Apparition of Jack]

17 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

Think of it this way..he has way way more ambition than the average joe- and I'm sure he had some financing in the beginning.   He is a visionary when it comes to technology - you can't take that away from him.  Most of us have just enough ambition to make breakfast.  We may have had the same insights but maybe we just didn't care.   Because money and wealth weren't that important to us.  Or we didnt possess greatness.  But Musk's ambition - what was the reasoning behind it? Was it to help society - was it greatness?  or was it to help himself? Well..it wasnt greatness...At least that's the argument.  He's interesting because he was such a visionary when it came to tech, but because of his mindset, in government his true colors are really coming alive.  His selfishness and need for power.

I see Musk as a symptom of the digital age. I think he, like countless others, drank the sci-fi kool aid and genuinely because that just some vague idea of “technology” is enough to solve humanity’s deepest social, economic and philosophical problems, without anyone genuine appreciation of the difficulty of such endeavours or how crucial love and compassion is to uplifting the world. 
 

He’s good at selling the *idea* of a techno-utopia, even if he doesn’t genuinely understand the full perspective of how to get there. Look at his Hyperloop for instance - it was marketed as the “transportation of the future”, like something straight out of I, Robot. Even the aesthetics of it proved this - it was covered in fancy sci-fi style lighting to make it look “futuristic.” The fact that it was just a generic tunnel that we’ve had since literal caveman days wasn’t important - all that mattered was that it have the *idea* of the future, even if it was never going to be the future itself.

Also look at his “robotic helpers” at his recent tech showcase - they weren’t AI-powered robots serving drinks, they were, again, literally just remote-controlled machines controlled by someone off-premise. Again, the fact that it wasn’t actually “the future” wasnt important, all that mattered was that it *felt* like “the future.”

Musk, fundamentally, doesn’t sell technology or progress, he sells *vibes.* And in a world with enough gullible fools who genuinely think AI will take us to Mars so we can all have sex with sexbots in space, those vibes can make someone incredibly powerful, even if they come at the cost of, well, destroying the *actual* future in the process.

[Viking]

On 3/8/2025 at 8:33 PM, Leo Gura said:

The delusion is the ego power trip.

And the idea that mankind needs him to survive and thrive.

No individual human is needed.

Mankind does not need to go to Mars. These are power fantasies.

When you think you are that important it ends in delusion and evil.

Is Musk powerful. Yes.

Is Trump powerful. Yes.

Yes, egoic delusions DO work for gaining power. That's the whole point of why ego exists. And also ego is evil.

I understand what you're saying and there may be ideas like these flowing in his head, but don't you think it oversimplifies him?

From what I've seen he does have self awareness so I don't think he 100% buys into this ego trip. He does see it as a mission, but I don't think he really thinks humanity "needs" him to survive... 

Even if he might've said things along this direction of thinking, you can't really know what goes on inside his head, and considering the way he speaks and his autism it's really easy to misinterpret what he says. 

I've known personally quite a few people with Asperger's/autism, and you can never rely on what you "feel" from their speech. You need to take what they say as literally as possible.

[TheAlchemist]

I think the magnitude and horror of Elon Musk's decision to cut up to 90% of USAID funding has not been recognized yet. It is directly analogous to willfully and unnecessarily unplugging people from a breathing machine. Arguably even worse. 

Millions of people are dependent on USAID funding to stay alive. His decisions will directly kill massive amounts of people simply due to malnutrition. And not to mention the devastating (global) effects of abruptly stopping disease prevention and sanitation programs. 

Collectively we really need to expand our notion of violence. Zizek and many others have laid the groundwork. Acts like Musk's should be seen as acts of devastating violence on a scale that we cannot even fathom.

Never forget this when you see him speaking and joking around. 

 

 

Edited March 18 by TheAlchemist