The Trouble with Elon
samharris.substack.com
samharris.substack.com
I can say my own personal worry/concern regarding Elon and similar, is I don't know how far "similar" goes. I'm fairly skeptical of any hero worship in the business sectors, but it is hard to shake the idea that a lot of current tech leadership is a bit more certain of their views than they should be. Especially politically/socially.
All the more frustrating, as I feel that open criticism and dialogue have been weaponized against folks to a degree that we started punishing people for honestly acknowledging mistakes in the past.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/19/nation/elon-musk-dona...
Presumably even if that wasn't the bet, he can backfill anyways so yes seems to be the likely answer.
"...He included a link to a page on the CDC website, indicating that Covid was not even among the top 100 causes of death in the United States. This was a patently silly point to make in the first days of a pandemic. We continued exchanging texts for at least two hours. If I hadn’t known that I was communicating with Elon Musk, I would have thought I was debating someone who lacked any understanding of basic scientific and mathematical concepts, like exponential curves..."
> Elon and I didn’t converge on a common view of epidemiology over the course of those two hours, but we hit upon a fun compromise: A wager. Elon bet me $1 million dollars (to be given to charity) against a bottle of fancy tequila ($1000) that we wouldn’t see as many as 35,000 cases of Covid in the United States (cases, not deaths).
He’s obviously far off the deep end now but the narrative that he is a complete charlatan is just plain wrong, as convenient as it would be.
C’est La Vie
Side note: I haven't liked anything of Harris since about 20 years ago during the new atheist movement, any suggestions for some of his more recent work?
I did my best with it, but it didn't change my life. It was fine; sitting quietly for ten minutes a day is probably a good idea.
I appreciated that he tried to avoid using woo-woo language, but I often didn't understand what he was going for. That's probably inevitable: he's trying to induce a state that you can't get a feel for until you've done it. (I'm reminded of learning to whistle. I put my lips together and blew, and kept doing that until suddenly it worked, but I could not tell anybody what made that instant different.)
I will say, though, that I often thought "If Sam Harris heard some yoga teacher say that, he'd rip them a new one."
It is entirely possible that I'd see more benefit if I continued past the 30 day trial. Clearly it works very well for some people; I'm certain that there's a "there" there. It's definitely better than trying to gaze into my soul through the backs of my eyeballs (which I did in fact hear from a yoga teacher).
Of the reasons I started trying to live my life as honestly as I can
I don't know how he's gotten as far as he has, both in access to power and down the rabbit hole, but it looks like he's drank the kool aid now. Maybe it's cynical opportunism, or maybe he surrounded himself with true believers who pushed him into it. But I have a feeling his story arc is far from over
It is rather surprising that Harris who is known for promoting meditation has gone so deep down the 'anything but Trump' rabbit hole and keeps on digging deeper, it does not speak well for the efficacy of his meditation techniques.
[1] https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/media/author-sam-ha...
I'm in agreement though, his podcast pre-2016 was pretty foundational for giving me things to think deeply about. But Trump broke him -- all the hours of airtime on that same soapbox, ad nauseam...
That being said, I still think he's pretty respectable. I started listening to his podcast again more recently, and realized my main dislike is his incessant nature to never let a poorly argued point go un-argued, until he wins. He's so tiring and brutal about that. But hyperbolic antics aside, there are very few times I've found myself fundamentally disagreeing with his assessment or argument (just his approach). And there are very few out there who are a match for his eloquence, when he can channel it and avoid stepping on a Trump rake.
Ironically, I think he could benefit from practicing more acceptance.
Sounds like bipolar disorder.
How many of these world-historical figures have done the Full Solomon without stating to believe their own press releases?
Conservatives have been moaning (perhaps with some basis) about Soros for these years. Are we swapping one Eminence Grise for another?
Decentralize this mess.
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6. This text appears to have ended our friendship. Elon never responded, and it was not long before he began maligning me on Twitter for a variety of imaginary offenses. For my part, I eventually started complaining about the startling erosion of his integrity on my podcast, without providing any detail about what had transpired between us.
7. At the end of 2022, I abandoned Twitter/X altogether, having recognized the poisonous effect that it had on my life—but also, in large part, because of what I saw it doing to Elon. I’ve been away from the platform for over two years, and yet Elon still attacks me. Occasionally a friend will tell me that I’m trending there, and the reasons for this are never good. As recently as this week, Elon repeated a defamatory charge about my being a “hypocrite” for writing a book in defense of honesty and then encouraging people to lie to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. Not only have I never advocated lying to defeat Trump (despite what that misleading clip from the Triggernometry podcast might suggest to naive viewers), I’ve taken great pains to defend Trump from the most damaging lie ever told about him. Elon knows this, because we communicated about the offending clip when it first appeared on Twitter/X. However, he simply does not care that he is defaming a former friend to hundreds of millions of people—many of whom are mentally unstable. On this occasion, he even tagged the incoming president of the United States.
All of this remains socially and professionally awkward, because Elon and I still have many friends in common. Which suggests the terms of another another wager that I would happily make, if such a thing were possible—and I would accept 1000 to 1 odds in Elon’s favor:
I bet that anyone who knows us both knows that I am telling the truth.
Everyone close to Elon must recognize how unethical he has become, and yet they remain silent. Their complicity is understandable, but it is depressing all the same. These otherwise serious and compassionate people know that when Elon attacks private citizens on Twitter/X—falsely accusing them of crimes or corruption, celebrating their misfortunes—he is often causing tangible harm in their lives. It’s probably still true to say that social media “isn’t real life,” until thousands of lunatics learn your home address.
A final absurdity in my case, is that several of the controversial issues that Elon has hurled himself at of late—and even attacked me over—are ones we agree about. We seem to be in near total alignment on immigration and the problems at the southern border of the U.S. We also share the same concerns about what he calls “the woke mind virus.” And we fully agree about the manifest evil of the so-called “grooming-gangs scandal” in the U.K. The problem with Elon, is that he makes no effort to get his facts straight when discussing any of these topics, and he regularly promotes lies and conspiracy theories manufactured by known bad actors, at scale. (And if grooming were really one of his concerns, it’s strange that he couldn’t find anything wrong with Matt Gaetz.)
Elon and I even agree about the foundational importance of free speech. It’s just that his approach to safeguarding it—amplifying the influence of psychopaths and psychotics, while deplatforming real journalists and his own critics; or savaging the reputations of democratic leaders, while never saying a harsh word about the Chinese Communist Party—is not something I can support. The man claims to have principles, but he appears to have only moods and impulses.
Any dispassionate observer of Elon’s behavior on Twitter/X can see that there is something seriously wrong with his moral compass, if not his perception of reality. There is simply no excuse for a person with his talents, resources, and opportunities to create so much pointless noise. The callousness and narcissism conveyed by his antics should be impossible for his real friends to ignore—but they appear to keep silent, perhaps for fear of losing access to his orbit of influence.
Of course, none of this is to deny that the tens of thousands of brilliant engineers Elon employs are accomplishing extraordinary things. He really is the greatest entrepreneur of our generation. And because of the businesses he’s built, he will likely become the world’s first trillionaire—perhaps very soon. Since the election of Donald Trump in November, Elon’s wealth has grown by around $200 billion. That’s nearly $3 billion a day (and over $100 million an hour). Such astonishing access to resources gives Elon the chance—and many would argue the responsibility—to solve enormous problems in our world.
So why spend time spreading lies on X?
Perhaps Elon is experiencing a degree of stress in his life that most people just cannot fathom - I am certain this other person I know is. I can imagine that extreme affluence and fame might also be as stressful as dire poverty. I believe extreme stress negatively affects integrity and impulse control.
Why would anybody want to prioritize a successful company with cost effective products over a bloated government agency?
And it's not just the libertarians / the (far) right, by the way - they just get more public attention. I have seen cases of similar escalations into conspiracy theories also among the far-left during Covid - from both anarchists as well as, curiously, tankies. Anarchists no surprise, for similar reasons as the libertarians, but the amount of tankies who went off the rocker is what I don't get given that they are among the strongest proponents of an authoritarian state doing whatever it deems to be best for the people.
The reason that people have been exposed to dangerous thinking is because the authorities that are supposed to protect us didn't do a good job with their messaging. The constant back and forth schizophrenic nature of many broadcasts and the condescension they carried pushed people into that.
It's a good reason why trying to lock down people was not a great idea in the first place. The bigger deal that they made out of things the more they polarized people.
Well... that's because "science" or "being nerds" has been demonized by society for a very long time. The coolest guys in school were never the "nerds" (or those who looked like a "nerd"), and that attitude is strewn across culture and media ('member the Simpsons episode with the brain pencil?), so it feeds back into schools again.
When wide parts of society as a result have zero idea about how science works - constantly learning and reevaluating based on new data - of course the messaging will look "back and forth". When one looks even at the most controversial opinions they were, with the knowledge available back then, correct.
The one and only exception was "selfmade cloth masks are effective", and that ruined a lot of trust. Of course the politicians knew it wasn't true, but on the other hand they weren't completely wrong either as even a cloth mask is much better than no mask, and they had to deal with scalpers and even looters while hospitals didn't have PPE left.
Yes a construction worker has no idea about aspects of science, but he also is never trusted when it comes to construction itself unfortunately because everyone assumes he's just there to put the framing together according to the plans.
They should have worked on their messaging. As soon as you start condescending people you lose them.
And let’s not forget the glaring saga of the lab leak theory, which was attacked and suppressed in news media and social media. It showed the extent of societal control that was being practiced under the guise of COVID. That violation of free speech principles is the troubling tangent, not the people who were asking for more transparency and accountability for China. In the end the CCP got away with a WHO visit only a year late, and with the only US rep having a conflict of interest since he was involved in the coronavirus work at Wuhan Institute of Virology (Peter Daszak of EcoHealth).
Uh... when have you ever seen refrigerator trucks being used as morgues because there were too many people dying [1]? I have never seen that ever before outside of areas struck by devastating floods, earthquakes or similar natural disasters.
> That violation of free speech principles is the troubling tangent, not the people who were asking for more transparency and accountability for China.
Blame that on the 45th - for purportedly being "anti China", he didn't do shit against China when it came to Covid other than mocking it as "the China virus" to stoke xenophobia.
Besides, it's still a fringe theory. Warnings over human settlements encroaching on bat caves and setting off epidemics from bats (who are a perfect breeding ground) have been sound years before Covid [2]. It is completely and utterly unsurprising that it eventually happened. Hell, the first coronavirus of 2005 was already linked to bats [3].
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/07/us/new-york-coronavirus-v...
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7152049/
[3] https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
Even people like Neil Ferguson gave up claiming it was 1% early. No idea where you're getting 3%-15% from.
The IFR fell "post vaccine" because of a mix of how vaccination status was defined and because Delta soon mutated into Omicron, which was just a normal cold virus and not deadly at all.
If I hadn’t known that I was communicating with Elon Musk, I would have thought I was debating someone who lacked any understanding of basic scientific and mathematical concepts, like exponential curves.
He absolutely needs at least a month or two Internet detox. Go offline entirely, travel the world, talk with real people, go cold turkey on any performance enhancing drugs, pop the information bubble he has surrounded himself with. He has capable CEOs at all of his companies, he clearly isn't spending that much time at any one of them given how many hours a day he spends on Twitter/X.
I'm not saying he will come back a changed man like Ebenezer Scrooge, but I think it would do wonders for his mental health. Sometimes you don't even realize how deep you are until you look up.