“This may sound corny but Love is the answer.” – Elon Musk on Joe Rogan’s Podcast.
My dear friends, foes, and loyal Grumers,
Apologies in advance for the long article, but I’m strongly compelled to share my personal thoughts about the living human meme and global phenomenon known as “Elon Musk“.
The following piece was inspired after listening to Elon Musk’s first appearance on ClubHouse – a fast-growing voice-enabled social media platform – and the ensuing conversation debating Elon’s persona and incredible achievements by a group of panelists that included; Tim Urban (@WaitButWhy), Lex Fridman (@lexfridman), Joscha Bach (@plinz), and Shaun Martin (@shaunmartin), and a few more I can’t remember.
Much of that conversation revolved around two questions: 1. What makes Elon so unique?, And 2. What can societies do to produce more people like him?
Like many technology enthusiasts, I’ve been following Elon well before he became an iconic entrepreneur. I’ve read his biography (which is already missing much given his rate of achievements), watched several documentaries, and hundreds of his interviews.
Elon is such a rare occurrence in human history that many think he could be a human-like alien implanted by an unknown alien civilization in an attempt to save humans from what seems like a sure path towards imminent and inevitable self-destruction.
As an individual whose achievements pale in comparison, I’m naturally curious to find out what I could do differently to have even an infinitesimal fraction of the impact Elon has already made in the world.
Below, you’ll find my humble attempt at answering some of the questions that have millions of people as perplexed by Elon’s unique persona and incredible accomplishments as I am.
I’m no scientist, and this is by no means a thoroughly researched piece. These answers are the result of my own observations and, therefore, could be completely off the mark, so take them with a grain of salt (or two).
Also remember, that English is my second language, so you’re bound to encounter several grammatical offenses that not even the latest A.I.-powered text correction technology (a.k.a. Grammarly) could help repair.
Disclaimers aside, let us begin with this week’s “elon”gated essay…
Are people like Elon born geniuses, or can they be replicated given the right environment?
This brings up the old nature vs. nurture debate.
If being a genius is mostly the result of winning the genetic lottery, then it would 100% futile to attempt to emulate someone like Elon (assuming he is actually a genius, which would be another debate in itself.)
However, there is considerable empirical evidence that with the right set of inputs, training, and environment, most humans can dramatically improve their potential.
There have been several experiments where genius-like results have been achieved with the right training (such as deliberately raising three daughters to become chess masters as I found reading this book).
Then, there is also the fact that people who achieve a certain level of success are inherently exposed to more opportunities, making it easier for them to achieve even more success.
Elon selling his first two companies early in his career (Zip2, PayPal) put him in a privileged financial situation that afforded him the ability to obtain the resources (money, connections, access to talent) required to start the two companies he is most famous for; Tesla and SpaceX.
Then there is the luck factor. Although Elon has endured several failures, overall, he has turned out to be incredibly lucky.
In late 2008, Elon almost ran out of money. If he hadn’t been bailed out in the last minute, he would have been considered a failure. Most of us fail to notice the incredible sequence of lucky events that need to happen for people like Elon to become outliers.
In fact, it could be argued that most, if not all extraordinary outcomes, are the result of a series of extraordinary events, where perhaps, just one of those events not happening would have yielded completely different outcomes.
Being born in a different country, being of a different race or gender. Even events such as being bullied when he was young may have helped him develop the extraordinary resilience required to persevere in tough times. A minor change in any of those variables could have prevented Elon from reaching his current level of success.
So maybe it is not so much the genius, but the fact that with enough people in the world, it becomes statistically unlikely for at least one individual not to become Elon Musk. This also means that it is statistically unlikely for 99.999% of the population to reach Elon’s level of success regardless of their intelligence, hard work, education, family, or growing environment.
We just need to be thankful that over the centuries, this world has had the right conditions for just enough luminaries to arise and help propel civilization forward to where it is today. People whom without we would be still stuck in the dark ages of medicine, science, or without any hope to stop our utter reliance in fossil fuels.
In the end, it is highly unlikely that we could ever recreate Musk-like humans on demand. That’s even if somehow we could provide millions of children some kind of extraordinary Musk-inspired educational blueprint (Elon’s Neuralink may change that).
However – as Dr. Shaun Martin pointed out when debating the nature vs. nurture issue – it may be true that we may never be able to beat nature with nurture, but if by reverse-engineering the operating systems of individuals like Elon, we could achieve even a fractional improvement in overall performance among the children population, the research effort would be totally worth it.
What can we do to be more like Elon?
Most interviews fail at revealing any useful methodology to replicate Elon’s results.
Perhaps, the problem doesn’t stem from the quality of the questions he gets during interviews, but simply that Elon is not capable of explaining how he does what he does. Much like Messi cannot explain why he is one of the best soccer players in the world.
I think the only reliable way to extract meaningful data would be by actually studying how Elon executes and makes decisions. Basically, implementing a more rigorous scientific approach than simply hoping to glean insights through basic questioning.
We had a rare opportunity to see Elon in action during his first ClubHouse appearance.
Towards the end of his interview, Elon asked the moderators to summon Vlad Tenev, founder of Robinhood, to the conversation.
A few seconds later, over 5 thousand listeners heard Vlad introducing himself. Immediately, Elon reversed roles and turned from interviewee to interviewer and began to grill Vlad about the debacle caused by the unprecedented rise of meme stocks (GameStop).
During that interaction, we got a glimpse of how effective Elon can be to get to the bottom of an issue (surely, something he has to do several times a day when urgent matters arise at one of his several multi-billion companies).
For a few minutes, we got to see Elon in action. And like seeing Messi performing one of his many physics-defying dribbling feats – it was revealing.
I think seeing more CEOs like Musk tackling tough problems and dealing adversity could be one of the most educational spectator sports for humanity.
I don’t want Elon telling me how he does things. I want to see how he does it, the same way I want to see Messi play soccer and not him telling him about it.
We would need to see hundreds of such interactions to reverse engineer the rules that govern his operating system.
We need to see how Elon does what he does best – execute (not him talking about how he executes)
As with Messi (for whom I’ve watched hundreds of hours of him playing soccer in slow motion), understanding the principles would never guarantee anyone could replicate the success.
However, through exhaustive observation, we may be able to unearth hidden patterns (for which the subject may be completely oblivious) that could be documented and then converted into a series of exercises that other people could implement to improve their results.
In the case of Elon, some of these thinking patterns have already been drawn or explained by Elon himself. The most famous one would be his first-principles approach to problem-solving.
Elon always goes back to physics fundamentals to find solutions to problems.
For instance, when trying to build rockets, Elon breaks down a rocket into its fundamental constituents; a bunch of steel, aluminum, and lots of liquid propellant. Basically a hollow metallic tube full of explosives.
The actual costs of the materials are not that much. Once the engineering challenges are solved, building rockets is less rocket science and more of a plumbing, welding, and fabrication challenge.
This approach can be applied to all industries, and he has done so for space travel (SpaceX), solar (Solar City), transportation (Tesla, HyperLoop), tunnels (The Boring Company), communications (StarLink), A.I. (OpenAI, NeuraLink).
Elon has laid down the basic blueprint he has followed to revolutionize every industry he has gotten involved with.
Now, it’s up to the rest of the world to do that with all other industries: medicine, education, finance.
If someone doesn’t do it, he may do it himself. For years, Elon said that the best way to solve traffic congestion in large cities was to dig tunnels. No one ran away with the idea for a potentially multi-billion dollar opportunity. So one day, he jokingly started the Boring Company.
While the rest of the world thinks, Elon acts. And in doing so, he is eating the lunch of many well established but slow-moving companies.
In the end, no matter how hard we try, most of us won’t ever be like Elon (nor should we, as he repeatedly admits his life is hell most of the time), but having people like him as educational role models could have a tremendous positive impact in humanity as a whole.
Does Elon deserve all the credit?
We tend to forget that Elon is just one individual, and although he is famously known for working 100+ hours a week, the accomplishments of his companies are the result of thousands of brilliant minds working together to solve hard problems.
Elon’s real genius may not be so much his rare combination of intellectual prowess and relentless determination, but that he has managed to motivate thousands of really smart people to join him in solving interesting problems that could improve the lives of billions of people.
Elon doesn’t build rockets or cars himself. Although unlike most CEOs of major corporations, he is heavily involved in product design and engineering (and even willing to sleep on Tesla’s factory floor to motivate his employees to go the extra mile), the majority of the work is done by huge teams of equally hard-working people that don’t get almost any credit.
So when we say Elon has accomplished this and the other incredible thing, we need to remember that in reality, thousands of people have worked their asses off to achieve most of what Elon gets credit for. It’s just that we humans have an easier time using as a reference a single individual. Mentioning thousands of names would be highly impractical when telling a story.
“If all your employees are vectors. Your company’s progress is the sum of all vectors.” (Elon’s advice on running a successful company to Hubspot CEO, Dharmesh Shah)
What Elon has done masterfully is pursue ambitious vectors and then using his resources to align people to the same vectors.
The vector is the company’s ultimate mission, and the more precise and clearly stated that vision is, the more likely it is to have people on board.
Elon has been strikingly consistent in the way verbalizes his missions (vectors), repeating for over two decades the same mission statements almost word by word (as pointed out by Tim Urban, who had a chance to interview Elon in person for his blog WaitButWhy).
In almost every interview, Elon will end up stating one or both of his missions.
Elon’s Mission 1: Accelerating the advent of sustainable transport (Tesla, Hyperloop, Boring Company).
Elon’s Mission 2: Make humans a multi-planetary species (SpaceX).
With both missions, Elon is trying to accomplish the same thing; buy us time as humans to find answers to the important questions about life and the Universe.
I find it inspiring to learn that the richest person on Earth doesn’t seem to be driven by money or status but by a genuine desire to build solutions that increase our chances to survive as a species.
As Elon said at the end of his first interview with Joe Rogan: “This may sound corny but Love is the answer.”
Elon loves humanity and has dedicated his entire life to building companies whose ultimate mission is to protect what he calls “the light of consciousness” because he perceives it as extremely unique and fragile occurrence in the Universe.
And by doing so, it’s making the vast majority of us look like fools pursuing trivial goals like getting more likes and subs or getting an annual 15% return on our investment portfolio.
Our mission vectors look pitiful in comparison, which explains why the vast majority of humans end up with quite mediocre outcomes.
There is no question that when you don’t have food to put on your table, your only vector should be pursuing means to find reliable nourishment. But for millions of people, where most of Maslow’s needs are well covered, we should really reconsider setting more audacious vectors that align towards a more sustainable future.
So in the end, we may never know how Elon became Elon or what it would take to replicate more people like him.
Whatever it was: genes, luck, aliens, timing, or a myriad of unsung heroes collectively known as “Elon Musk”, there is something we can undeniably thank him for.
Thanks Elon for dreaming big, taking insane risks, and inspiring millions to build a better world.
Peace. Love. Elon-gated-Cookies.
Miguel @ Grumo.com
P.S. Shout out to Ali Adab for inviting me to join ClubHouse just in time to attend Elon’s interview.
P.2. Did you get this far? First, Thank you. Second, do you agree/disagree with my observations. And third, would you like to see more thought pieces like this? Would love to know. Gracias!
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Hey Miguel.
A very informative post — thanks for sharing. Good to know you’re not one-dimensional and it’s not all about your work!
I really must say something, though, about how you characterize Mr. Musk. He may be quite a brilliant mind (I haven’t studied him in-depth like you) but there are some things I don’t think you get right.
To say he doesn’t care about money is a bit much to accept. People don’t make massive amounts of money accidentally, as a by-product of doing something. Making that much money is based on a serious plan to make money. When there was talk of an American-backed coup in Bolivia, in response to someone saying that Bolivia is a sovereign country and what justification do you have to do that, Musk tweeted something flippant — that’s what we do (Bolivia has massive deposits of Lithium, which are very important for electric cars).
Not sure about loving humanity. The documentary Planet of the Humans tries to articulate that electric cars and wind power is not how we are going to save the planet. That’s just an extension of the current capitalist economic approach that is destroying the planet. Electric cars are better than gas cars, but only minimally (or maybe hardly at all). You’re still building all those cars, mining all the materials including lithium to make new cars and continuing with the same economic logic — using up natural resources in an unsustainable way on a finite planet. Rather than making tunnels, why don’t you try creating cities to live in = drive less (rather than cities to work in, where you need to drive to get to work). Of course he would propose tunnels because you still promote driving cars.
Not sure how the space travel thing is related to caring about humanity. Light of consciousness and multi-planetary existence seems disconnected from real life (although he probably believes in the Singularity so it would make more sense in that light). I’m from Canada and one of our astronauts spent 6 mths on the Space Station. When he returned he had to be carried off the space shuttle — his muscles had atrophied. Physiologically he aged several years. Humans have evolved for hundreds of thousands of years on earth — we’re not made to live in space or other planets. And also, Musk is the typical hyper-capitalist who is happy to let the gov’t/taxpayer fund the basic and applied research and swoop in and supply the plumbing and fabrication to profit off of sending travelers into space.
My theory is these billionaires who are into space travel/Mars exploration (they’re very focused on the future) see the world according to their vision and they see life on Earth becoming unsustainable and they’re looking for a way to solve this “problem” — that they themselves perpetuate. They can’t imagine an alternative future because they are driven to keep behaving in the way they always have. A better future would be to stop what we’re doing and do something much more sustainable.
Mr. Musk said something recently, commenting on the political fighting in the USA about the stimulus cheques ($2,000, $1,400, etc.). He said that those stimulus cheques wouldn’t be good for people. To me that says it all — not sure how he can claim to care about humanity. Keeping in mind that millions of Americans don’t have healthcare, we’ve seen thousands of people lined up a food banks, the economy (not the stock market) is in a major recession.
He has a brilliant mind — maybe more that it is lightning fast. But he seems cold-hearted to me. Like Bezos, with Amazon making dramatically increased profits during the pandemic but fighting bitterly against workers unionizing — I think Musk has a lack of empathy and is closer to the sociopathic end of the spectrum than the compassionate end.
I’d much rather have a thousand people of mediocre intellect around than a few brilliant people that bring little kindness and generosity to the world. These CEOs and hyper-capitalists generally tend toward being sociopathic. To get to the top they are willing to do anything — they either don’t have or have lost the ability to empathize. I think intelligence is over-rated. It’s important but it’s over-valued. Other important things are under-valued — kindness, generosity, compassion, cooperation.
Thanks Miguel — I do enjoy your videos and tools about making better courses. I guess I have a bugaboo about fawning over Mr. Musk and the whole Tesla mystique.
Stephan, thanks for sharing your thoughtful comments and counterpoint to my article.
You bring up very valid points and in essence I agree with most of them.
I find it difficult to really understand public figures’ motives, so many of what we could discuss as outsiders will always fall back into the speculation realm.
After seeing hundreds of hours of Elon Musk interacting with other people, my impression is that he is genuinely motivated to help build solutions to create a more sustainable future.
There is no doubt that Elon must have been some tyrant to get to his level of success. He probably doesn’t have much time for people that don’t perform at his level. Again, we can only speculate. That’s why I think it would be great to see him in action as a CEO, not just during interviews.
However, so far, all the accounts I’ve found of people that have worked with him closely or interacted with him off the record seem to point to the same behaviour on and off-camera.
We don’t know if any of the technologies he is promoting and profiting from will have the desired impact.
Time will tell. I hope the net result is positive.
Hi Miguel.
No doubt Mr. Musk truly believes what he is doing is good. Extremely rare that someone says I’m a son-of-a-bitch and I’m doing it for my own good (not saying he’s an SOB). I’m sure he believes electric cars are going to save the planet, but that doesn’t make it so. Maybe he says he doesn’t care about money and he really believes that, but maybe that’s not so true. If he doesn’t care about money why doesn’t he give it away ? You can only spend so much as one person/family and there is so much that could be done to make the world better today. Maybe he doesn’t care about money but he cares about the power that comes from having a lot of money…
Sorry for going on… Not what you were posting about.
Good on you if he inspires you to make the world a better place. Even if he is a false prophet (more of a Profit than a Prophet). Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Maybe what you are really attracted to is someone who doesn’t fit into the mold, who is a bit of a misfit compared to societal norms and who is also successful in their endeavours. Probably like yourself to some degree.
If that rings true at all — understanding Mr. Musk more deeply is not going to help you or anyone to be as exceptional as he is. You need to be the most authentic version of yourself that you can achieve — and the rest comes down to luck and conditions and making opportunities work.
Without knowing Mr. Musk at all, I would guess his incredible drive is not based on his being fully connected with his authentic self and truly comfortable in his own skin. That kind of person would be more like the Dalai Lama. But that is the human condition — great achievements are often motivated by deep-seated pain and suffering.