Perhaps because it's much less prominent in science fiction.
Reversing aging does nothing to solve the same problem.
It's also a huge pet issue for all his wealthy SV friends (Thiel et al), so he may not feel he needs to add anything to it personally.
He explicitly said that he doesn’t want to live forever. Very different from other Silicon Valley rich kids. Humble, actually.
Remember Kurzweil? Called Steve Jobs’ commencement speech about death being nature’s change agent a “deathist statement”.
Of course Jeff Bezos is a bit closer, but Jeff investing only a few billion dollars in 1 company (even though it’s the most important company) is also not rational.
“I love how childish and petty it is. There is no depth or human complexity to Musk whatsoever: he's just a rich kid who got lucky and now we marvel at his exertions day in, day out. The New York Times still casts Musk as a public intellectual, even now, because its editors live in a floating world of narrative imagination and are impervious to the facts of the matter. In return, he calls it ‘diarrhea.’ They completely deserve one another.”
https://boingboing.net/2023/04/02/petulant-musk-rants-about-...
What brings it to mind here is there’s a thought experiment that considers a very large number of people playing a series of rounds of Russian roulette. At the end there are a handful of very lucky and very wealthy people (and a vast graveyard of th unlucky).
I don't understand why we think successful business people somehow have the same acumen, or equivalent inclinations as a philosopher or an artist. For sure there is some overlap, but at the end of the day I think it's more probable Elon's intelligence and aptitude are overrated by just about everyone while his people managing skills and luck are underrated by just about everyone.
> He takes questions at Tesla earnings calls that other CEOs would delegate to lower level executives
He can lie better and he is controlling micromanager.
(i’m very much not holding my breath for the vr/ar goggle thing, though)
Selection bias in action - we don't hear anything about the people who were less lucky than him.
One should never underestimate the importance of luck (and, if you are clever enough, you can even optimize for that).