An interview I recently read with Seth Rogen was very illuminating (from the NY Times):

"You know how every once in a while you read one sentence and it snaps your whole perspective into place? I remember reading that book “Going Clear,” about Scientology, and there was one sentence about how if famous people aren’t treated in a certain way, it makes them think they’re not as talented as they wish they were. Like, if I go to a restaurant and I have to wait 20 minutes for a table instead of them just seating me right away, am I not as talented as I thought I was? If someone has a nicer hotel room than me on the press tour, does that mean I’m not as good an actor as I thought I was? I think that’s how a lot of famous people interpret how they’re treated."

I think the same applies to Musk. The money is a proxy for how much everybody thinks he is a special genius. Anything in his life that makes him feel less special requires more validation that he is, and money is the easiest validation he is able to acquire.

Status is transformative, and addictive.

Money is power. Power corrupts.

Also, dude was raised by terrible rich people and turned out to be...a terrible rich person. Color me shocked!

It's a game to him.

He won.

Let's move on.

Musk has more money than most of us would dream of, but the game isn't over until it's over.

Speaking just for myself, I've lost respect from Elon Musk. I admire Musk's accomplishments, especially Starship and the Falcon rockets. But I don't respect Musk's personal judgement, his moral integrity or his ethics.

He doesn't know me, and he doesn't care about my opinion (or care about ethics for that matter). But there are a lot of people like me who used to respect him and no longer do. He's surrounded himself with fawning sycophants. At some level he's got to know this, and that the people pretending to pay him respect aren't themselves worthy of respect.

Most people don’t dream of having obscene amounts of money.

Did he really win? His kids all hate him, his wives all left him, he has no real friends. Anyone he interacts with is purely after money and power they can get from him. He spends all day being angry on twitter.com.

Is that winning?

By his metrics? Probably.

I think the point of the Rogen quote is that there's no real way to win. This is not cope by the not mega-rich and famous. It's an inevitable result of wanting universal acclaim.

Rogen quote? I don't know what that is.

I think you're over-complicating this.

It's literally just Score Points.

That's all he cares about.

Uh, click the root button on your comment.

Oh! haha, sorry, it was late and I was a couple of drinks in when I first responded.

D'oh.

It can't and it's just not. People use the word "money" for different things. He's not doing it for another bill or a number on some screens- neither are most employees of those companies. That's just projecting values on someone else.

The things they're trying to accomplish require extreme amounts of capital.

> The things they're trying to accomplish require extreme amounts of capital.

This could really cut either way. Like assume you mean he’s trying to do something good or noble (lmao) but the other obvious way to read this would be that he’s interested in becoming wealthy/powerful enough to bend the will of a nation before him and burn the world for a laugh.

It’s just funny how the markets seem to want to value him as some sort of AI visionary when his companies are not even in the top 5 for AI, despite his endless resources.

The way I see it, he's already well past the "wealthy/powerful enough to bend the will of a nation before him and burn the world for a laugh" but still needs to keep working to do his (and companies) stated "good or noble" goals. Why do the fervid anti-Elon people not even bring up his many flaws or mistakes and always concoct weird reality-orthogonal situations?

Ok sure I can be more more direct: how does aligning himself to the republican party and taking a detour to unwind as many social programs as possible in any way help his stated goals, corporate or otherwise?

The only answer is the dude is a self-service piece of shit. He has no principles and is not trying to accomplish anything other that exploit for the sake of exploitation.

That's not the only answer, it's just the one you want. There was a clear coup of the Democratic Party (or just shifting of values) that was jeopardizing both the actual climate change issues and the mission to mars. You can keep trying to find ways to justify the idea that he's just completely selfish, just wants money, or whatever, but you're going to have to do a lot more work.

Assuming best intentions, making a colony on mars is gonna require money

Not even Elon is delusional enough to truly believe a mars colony is a remote possibility.

I don't think you can describe his beliefs using booleans like that: you have to use a numeric scale. It would be be correct to say: Elon would need a hell of a lot of ketamine to believe a colony on mars is a possibility.

It's not exactly like Cookie Clicker. Many people definitely like seeing the number going up, but for most people that get to that point of wealth, the goal is power that the money represents. A human being may struggle to relate to them, but they really are motivated by the sole desire to own and control everything.

Musk is probably a clinical narcissist (NPD). If that's the case, no amount of power, status, or riches (or ketamine) will ever be enough

Their motivations are often cartoonishly superficial and... well... stupid. Stupid in ways that are baffling to most people (even most other neurodivergent). The kind of stupid that drives somebody to secretly pay pro-gamers to play games for them so they can pretend to be a pro-level gamer, only to then expose their own fraud by playing the game themselves on a live stream, without knowing how to actually play it. And then pretending to have connection issues when people start noticing.

I have no trouble believing Musk has simply internalized the identity of being the world's richest man and now has a pathological need to maintain that status, no matter what

You cannot get that rich without money being the motivator.

Yes you can. Money is a medium of exchange. Stock is a medium of exchange. But they buy the ability to effectuate your will in the world. If you have a vision of the world money, human capital, political power are not the measure of success or the goal. They are the instruments of executing a vision.

Some people aren't motivated by money, they are motivated by reputation, or pathology.