I found this conversation fascinating and can't wait to read the book. It just occurred to me that there may be a psychological perspective that’s worth exploring that might help shed light on this rage and perpetual unhappiness that seems to be fuelling these guys' lust for power.
You did touch on aspects of it when you spoke about how some of them may be disillusioned that their lofty dreams of making things/changing the world have not come to pass, how they may be struggling with the sense that they're getting old and despite their immense wealth they have not really made much of a difference, and the world is not recognising them as the heroes they're imagining themselves to be.
In my field of research, which is called ‘adult development’ (or vertical development), we look at how the psychological complexity of adults continues to grow through the lifetime through predictable stages. We look at cognitive complexity (how sophisticated is one’s thinking, how many perspectives can they hold, can they zoom in/out of a situation to see the bigger picture alongside the details). But we also look at other types of maturity, for example, moral maturity – how able is an adult to operate according to a very clear moral compass that is intrinsic, internalised (versus earlier stages of moral maturity where people follow their self-interest as their sole guiding light). This field also studies ‘ego-development’ – how complex is the narrative an individual tells themselves about the world and their role in it, and are they able to deconstruct that narrative and build a new one when context evolves. All these strands of maturity contribute to enabling people to adapt to life and operate with day-to-day wisdom – not something we see much in the tech bros that make up the topic of this conversation.
I would argue, through the lenses I mentioned above, that some of these behaviours we are seeing – radicalisation, power hoarding, greed, righteous anger – are all symptoms of people having gotten stuck on the psychological development ladder. Their ‘achiever’ mindsets (this is one of the stages we use to measure maturity) has gotten them to the success they created for themselves, but once there, they did not have the capacity to de-construct their worldviews and grow themselves so they could deal with emotional pain and cognitive dissonance brought about by life challenges - the inevitable decline of ageing, the disillusionment of one’s kids making choices you don’t agree with (see Musk’s obsessions around ‘woke virus’). They continue to operate in the world from the same level of psychological maturity they likely had in their 20s’, but that is leading to some seriously flawed, toxic and, at the moment, profoundly dangerous behaviours.
I’d also argue that many of them have long had a big gap between their cognitive development (many are smart people) and their moral-emotional development (which is lagging). As their material power has increased, this gap has become more visible and its real-world consequences terrifying. This turned into a much too long comment, but I find the perspective fascinating and hope more people consider this angle in trying to make sense of what is happening to us.
Fascinating comment. I'm not a Ph.D (I got my collateral while my wife got hers) and I am a retired cop. When I worked the jail (the first 18 months of my 30 year career) I made an observation that I could tell, roughly, when a person started using drugs by where their emotional development seemed to be stuck. I remember working the women's housing unit, and watching the 15 or so inmates that had the custodial status to be able to attend a church service (completely in house, but it was co-ed in that the male inmates sat on one side and the female inmates on another) "get dressed" for church. The jail issued the same identical clothes (green pullover, v-neck shirt, and elastic waistband pants) to each inmate, and these women would be trading shirts to see which one looked best. They reminded me of my sister and her friend in late elementary/junior high getting ready for school, and trading clothes.
I followed up with some questions over the next week, and found that the age range of first drug use was 12-15. (I did not, at that time, follow with any inquires regarding sexual abuse history; I was very new and did not know the lifetime impacts of that history yet.)
Wow! I think your example here is so powerful, and it does lead me to think of the impacts of early trauma on effectively 'freezing' someone's development at an early stage.
Early trauma is huge and impacts not only intellect, social ability but physical health in the long run. But there are other types of issues that can stilt development within an otherwise 'normal' environment ... smartness does not always equate to success or ability to operate within social construct.
I think you see that with JD Vance. He didn't have a normal upbringing, so hence he throws his wife and her religion under the bus. He could have just directed the question elsewhere but he doesn't know how. He's literally an example of "arrested development." A great show, BTW.
But there are many who survive 'abnormal' upbringing and come out the other side as highly successful worthy people. What is the difference? What does one have that the other does not? What part of the development is arrested? EQ is what I believe is missing for these individuals though they can appear successful they are none the less incomplete.
How do you know what you are seeing. It is a well know phenomenon that when people are put in certain social environments that the environment reinforces infantilization. Take a look at assisted living with people that were successful before they moved there.
Well, keep in mind they were in jail, so there’s a smorgasbord of potential factors. As a young cop, that was what I noticed. No psychological or sociological investigation, just a cop managing a lhousing area.
Jail and assisted living, different but with the similarity that someone else is making decisions on how they live. This think that is what makes them seem like kids. I don't doubt your observation, but I would look more at the cause.
I have worked in the field of child development psychology. This has given me a great insight into adult development psychology. I believe this field is by far the most important work I have ever done and the most important work our society should be engaged in. It’s now to the point of life and death for our society.
This is all good and relevant, though it may be even simpler than that: too much power concentrated into too few hands, which runs counter to democracy…
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
I am surely biased on this one, since this is my work, but I do agree with you that an unerstanding of the mechanisms and levers of life-long cognitive and psycho-emotional development seems to be very much an existential skill for humanity at the moment...
As a 10-year old I developed a dream of myself as a concert pianist because I mastered a Rachmininoff Piano Concerto and created a highly styled version of Autumn Leaves. Quite perfect and still beautiful to this day when my hands work and my memory does not fail me. A very frail base for such a belief in my greatness, given that I neither acquired the theororetical background nor the requisite ability to read musical notation upon which such a dream is dependent. I own a piano, but do not tour, obviously. Wealth didn't afford me the privilege to live out any of my dillusions of greatness. These men seemed to achieve wealth early based upon narrow portfolios, as well, and over-priced through it probably was.
These tech guys are brilliant within very narrow confines. Their social/emotional intelligence is very lacking. Their actions indicate that they are emotionally immature and not well rounded. They just do not pick up or process social cues.
Thank you for this comment. As a retired psychologist who has always had an interest in adult development, I think you are on to something here. As I read the transcript, what came to my mind was an image of children playing with loaded guns.
That's a powerful (and terrifying) image. It makes me think of this quote from Edward O. Wilson: "The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. It is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall."
Is it because we admire their intellect and wealth over their (lack of) humanity? Do we covet the intellect thinking (wrongly) that it guarantees access to wealth? Or that the intellect guarantees the rightness of their opinion over others?
This was in fact a bit of an argument at my house yesterday. Unfortunately Elon was on Joe Rogan yesterday, and more so now I have to listen to the damn thing to understand what was being communicated at least from what the listener was able to take away which did not align with what I know (experientially) about transfers of benefit payments (Federal/State/Local) to recipient via govt sources and their traceability. Yes some dead people do get benefits but not to the extent portrayed.
great analysis....I personally think that most of them are evil sociopaths and live in what was once termed 'richistan' where they live in another realm of reality
It would be nice if it was a funny sitcom instead of sometimes being dangerous or damaging when combined with power and wealth.
I sometimes try to put myself in their shoes to see how their internal dialogs might go, in order for some of these people to be able to take the actions they take.
Perhaps they see many things regarding social morality, and the responsibility for it, as external rather than intrinsic. I have often thought about this, so I am glad you mentioned it. Thus, with an extrinsic mortality mindset, they can separate themselves from their behavior and the harm it might cause. There would also need to be lots of internal justification for what they do, unless they are sociopaths, in convincing themselves that there is some greater good down the road, or something to excuse some of what they do or prioritize. Going there in my head and "shoe wearing" is so disturbing to me and contradictory in the way my own personal narrative goes that I can't do the "their shoes" thing for too long. To me, it is like the upside down world in the Netflix series Stranger Things and is disturbing, but that can be another's normal.
I find it interesting that there are so many psychologists commenting on your post and hanging out reading Krugman early in the am.
I guess the means by which we decide to distribute resources and also allocate power, economics, is really, at its heart, a reflection on the innermost workings of an inner personal narrative about ourselves and the world, about right and wrong. Social power is acquired when some find ways to bring others into a shared narrative and gin up support for it and sometimes themselves, as well, in a society. In doing so they create a common narrative with which to form political policy and laws for society.
I find economics fascinating, as well, so I can see how psychologists can also be drawn to it, especially the way Krugman describes it.
I grew up in a family of PhDs, several were psychologists, and when many decades ago, as a woman about to graduate with a degree in business and economics, I was only offered clerical work, since women were not often allowed in that male dominated world out of an academic setting, back then. So, I went back and studied biological psychology, as well, and then studied primate social behavior.
There was certainly no place for a dyslexic person, like me, in clerical work, for sure, regardless. So, maybe I was lucky that I could simply not be stuffed in the traditional box of female employment that some employers wanted to put me in, since I struggle with spelling and punctuation and far more, and could not even type at the time. So, I decided to continue my studies. The more I studied psychology, the more I thought back on my economics courses, as well, and about how, and why, people do things as a society. It made me love and be fascinated by economics even more.
After my son was born, I worked in an extended-day kindergarten program and there seemed to be a clear differences early on between those who could easily learn some things we consider social behavior norms, like sharing, or even waiting in line, or being willing to not be first in line, etc.
Some had far more trouble adapting to these concepts, and if it was one concept, it was typically all of them. Was this nature or nurture? I could not tell you. It was likely a bit of both. I had a fraternal twin that was prone to rages and I was quiet and an introvert and rather subdued in nature. She was sociable and outgoing and courageous. I was not. She had trouble with honesty and separating the real world from fantasy in engaging with others, and I can't lie if my life depended on it and have a panic attack if I even try, and get worried that someone will find out and it would be a horrible moral disgrace. In her aggressive combative nature in dealing with the word, her inclination, if caught in a lie with concrete proof is always to embellish even more, pivot, and never back down and never ever admit she was wrong. Being wrong is simply not an option for her. She was a genius, I am learning disabled. We obviously grew up in the same environment, and at the same time. So, was this nature or nurture?
Perhaps some of the kids I worked with had been to preschool and/or had siblings and others did not, so those who did may have had a leg up on concepts of sharing and social skill practice from an early age. I simply don't know.
We simply do not know everything about what makes us who we are.
I can certainly see that something like drug use or an overfocus on something and getting stuck, as you put it in, a personal narrative at a stage in life, could also cause some to not continue to grow and develop even as adults, if they are not having their internal narrative challenged and are not continuing to engage in personal reflection and with the wider world and have severe tunnel vision when it comes to incorporating new information that might contradict their preferred narrative, a narrative that might a basis for their self-esteem.
I love the juxtaposition of psychology and economics in your comment. I wonder if our current economic narrative of infinite growth is not a reflection of our developmental narrative ('you are your material success', 'the only way onwards is upwards'). Is it our limited developmental capacity that prevents us from questioning the economic paradigms that have led us to this point? If so, what would it take for a collective shift in mindset? In my optimistic moments I do hope we can evolve our psychological maturity fast enough to prevent collective collapse. On my pessimistic days I doubt we'll be able to grow up in time...
Education. Exactly what this regime seeks to tear down for the masses. Programs like SNAP, Headstart, Medicaid all help to bring balance and development.
I came to work in the early 80's, the days of the Wall Street 'fat cats', the M&A moguls, the quants, now hedged fund bros, who by virtue of their intellect were richer than the rest of us and we all deified them for their successes, mostly insider trading born of wealth and position it turns out.
We need to see they are not the gods or heroes we thought them to be and for crying out loud ... trickle down does NOT trickle down. Left to their own devices they are destroying the very masses that feed both ego and pocket book of the oligarchs. They clearly lack the capacity to see the endgame, which we have the populace and power to create if we can get over the hero worship and tear down a different wall.
Look to the neurosciences, they explain all behaviors.
Read or YouTube Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky‘s book, Behave. No free will.
The press reported it as the rich will steal candy from a baby, Sapolsky explained what really happened:
Paraphrasing- “ have people do some task in the lab and tell them when they’re finished there’s a bowl of candy by the door and on their way out and they can help themselves to it. And that any leftover candy will be given to ‘some kids.’ The wealthier the person the more candy they took.”
He also explains how dopamine habituates so that what was the thrill of a lifetime yesterday, you’ll come to expect today and it won’t be enough tomorrow.
Next, experiences change brain biology. We see it with trauma and PTSD. Become megarich turns the brain to mega greed. And Silicon Valley is following Moldbug, real name is Yarvin.
The plan is to destroy democracy to protect their wealth.
Finally Heather Cox Richardson explains that the libertarian party comes directly from the very conservative slaveholders who didn’t want the government involved in building roads or schools, etc. because they didn’t want the government to look into slavery.
It swings back to the neurosciences saying “that all conservative views are rooted in authoritarianism and not worth considering” - Robert Sapolsky.
Back in the 70s, I read of some work that reported that, back during the Depression, hoboes (migrant workers) discovered that poorer people were much more supporting; the wealthier people would turn them away. This work was coming back to light during the stagflation era of the 70s as Sociologists discovered that it was also true then.
Rich kids simply may be unaware that there is not simply more candy in the cupboard to refill the bowl. A poor kid may have experienced limitation issues on a daily basis.
These are important observations with which one can see correlational behavior, but then assigning a cause is simply mere speculation and unscientific without further study.
If someone wants to believe wealth causes greed they will simply look at things like this, this way. It is kind of like Kennedy and his Tylenol. If pain and fever for pregnant women has a statistically significant relationship to babies born with ADHD, and these women take more tylenol because of pain, the actual cause could be what is causing pain and fever or the pain and fever itself, not Tylenol. He has mistaken correlation with causation. One has to try to isolate a variable to see, etc and they have already done this and ruled out Tylenol.
Now of course, I am looking at your comment though my own perception in that I do not think wealth causes greed, and I do not have enough evidence either. It could be the case and I could be wrong, I just do not see any proof from what this research presents.
However, yes, a brain will habituate to neurotransmitters like dopamine, meaning one may need a larger source of stimulus. But one would also have to get a rush from wealth and power in the first place.
Some rich and powerful folks could be addicted to it, others not so. However, one would have to see wealth and power as a positive stimulus. As an introvert and an anxious person, I repel from such things like a bad smell and want to hide. So, no dopamine rush for me. Put me in the spotlight and give me a bunch of cash and it would not cause a desire for more. In addition, world domination sounds like a horror film in my world and an everyday miserable grind.
Maybe one's personal narrative forms the neuronal connections and channels for what is considered a reward stimulus for the brain, I do not know. Once addicted the reverse can also be true in that the brain causes to get you to find ways to get that next fix - addiction changes the structure of the brain itself. Talk about getting stuck - you even have a different brain, but one need not be stuck forever.
OK - now I see - I made an incorrect assumption as to what the reply was in regards to. I will change my response. Actually, I might as well delete it as it no longer is relevant.
"Nevermind" as Emily Litella would say on SNLs weekend update.
I think wealth can cause experiential limitations. Imagine the myriad of things we do without thinking .. grocery shop, prepare meals, budget, fill the gas tank, balance the checkbook ...
Another great program I helped on was School to Work. It was for 7th/8th grade social studies where each kid was given a salary (based on grades which I was not a fan of) and had to get housing, food, transportation and the expectation was to be able to save money as well. I provided checkbooks and banking tools (savings and loan rates) for the kids to use for these purposes. They had to write checks, balance checkbooks and see how much they had left. Some squandered and others saved.
You are right, we do not need to be stuck forever, but we DO need to be willing to recognize we ARE stuck. This takes humility and introspection which can be a very hard pill to swallow.
And they didn’t define anyone as being rich, it was wealth. “The wealthier the person the more candy they took.” They were not consciously aware of what they were doing. This is how brain biology works. Nothing to do with your conscious mind. Your conscious mind is the prefrontal cortex, the front part, it’s the rest of the brain is what they’re talking about.
It explains why the rich as a group refuse to pay taxes as a group. It’s why they all turn to schemes to hide their wealth when they have so much of it. Is Elon Musk worth $1 trillion pay package? It’s that kind of absurdity, that’s their world.
As for the rest of the brain, take racism as an example. Per Sapolsky, Racism starts with the amygdala or the fear center part of the brain, it’s located in the temporal lobe areas bilaterally. When we see a person of a different skin color the amygdala responds within 28 ms, way before conscious awareness. The prefrontal cortex, the thinking part, doesn’t get involved until about 500 ms or half a second later.The prefrontal cortex either increases or decreases the response from the amygdala, this is all seen with Neuro imaging, like functional MRI and with the bigger 3 Tesla magnets they use now they can see way deep into the brain and the last five years have been revealing according to Sapolsky.
Destroying democracy to protect their wealth implies that they want to protect their separateness from the rest of humanity and their presumed superiority. I can’t quite remember the quote—There must be an in-group that is protected by the law but not bound by it. And an out-group that is bound by the law but not protected by it.
The slavers were against internal improvement as they were called then because they didn't want the North to get any richer, and thus more powerful politically, and they were opposed to tariffs which were favored in the North to protect its developing manufacturing base.
I was addressing kind of narrow historical point. Greed is one of the original sins for all of humanity. US Protestantism added this wrinkle: wealth was a sign of God's favor. Ergo, being poor meant that in God's eyes, the poor were immoral, and thus it was easy to dismiss them as unworthy. Today's evangelical Christians believe this, and if they have doubts about it, the prosperity gospel preachers are there to get them back on the path. So, yes, some people are greedy...poor want to be rich, rich man wants to be king, and a king ain't satisfied 'til he rules everything.
You are essentially correct. But I think greed is innate, not learned, although it can be learned. One cannot ignore religion, man made or inspired. It has caused a lot of problems in human history, but not per se, but how people took advantage of it, or used it. Or discriminated by it.
Look at this way-- US Protestant religion validates wealth. Thus it justifies greed. Your last sentence is right on the money.
Your comment is very interesting. I'm an amateur, but have been reading peer-reviewed papers on personality for about 18y. My late brother-in-law had authoritarian personality, so I spent the first 15y or so on that, then branched out to the question of why some are immune to propaganda and others aren't. My own experience with my brother-in-law, plus the papers I read on that subject, convinced me that people with AP have arrested psychological development. Sometimes when talking to my b-i-l I got the impression that I was talking to a young child.
Glad you brought up morality; I haven't quite figured that one out yet. But will bring up what Hannah Arendt wrote in "Eichmann in Jerusalem" about the impression she had of Adolf Eichmann at his trial—that his problem was one of a failure to think. What she called "thoughtlessness" is an inability to put oneself in the place of others, especially when they're suffering. Now I know that doesn't solve the psychologist's question of *how* such things happen, but I do find it a powerful diagnosis.
Excellent added insights. As I read I was thinking these problems are not new. We all journey to these same places as we age or have experiences. Wealth, as far as I view it, doesn't change the bare facts that to grow as a human being, to use your cognitive advantages and capacity, involves going through these stages. Otherwise one is faced with stagnation and disconnection to the very real needs of human beings. Humanities and the other Sciences do give one a context for this shared living organism requirement. While touting their genetic and cognitive advantages perhaps shutting out other areas of cognitive enrichment have short changed some.
Which leads me to a curiosity of do these men (all men mentioned) not have a basic understanding that diversity is essential to all living organisms for survival? Humans are no exception. Designing systems, or the ultimate system to automate the distribution of Earth's resources across the planet, cannot ignore diversity. Democracy incorporates the natural distribution of human diversification and the effects of that diversification on all other living organisms. Why organize another governance style effectively destroying such diversity? It does not make sense. To take it to the door of these Tech Oligarchs... it does not compute.
Great insight here! When I worked as a journalist in the tech world of the 80s and early 90s I definitely perceived a kind of extended adolescence among these entrepreneurs, mostly male. It's terrible to consider that many of them have stalled at that level of ego development but that seems true of this new crop of tech titans, especially. For a while I thought that earlier members of the generation of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs might have moved further into adulthood. Now I'm not so sure since Jobs died too early, it seems, to have ever shed his narcissism, and Gates is becoming something of an enigma as he pulls back from his earlier concerns about the climate crisis. Doesn't someone like Elon Musk seem like a big kid--but on ketamine!? These men are becoming ever more dangerous as they engage in geopolitics and militarism.
So these folks haven't been praised enough, eh? well, let's give them pats on the back and send them off to do something useful for humanity - praising them along the way, "good dog" type of thing.
"They continue to operate in the world from the same level of psychological maturity they likely had in their 20s’, but that is leading to some seriously flawed, toxic and, at the moment, profoundly dangerous behaviours."
Bam! I had a lot of the same thoughts and observations listening (three times) to this post. This, in fact, has been a long time fringe discussion within my family for decades. While I am in no way qualified to opine besides personal experience growing up in and around some very intelligent people.
IQ vs EQ has been the basis of these perspectives particularly as to how young minds are fostered and develop into adulthood ... and yes, gender bias does play a role and probably saved me from being a total nut job. As children enter school they are quickly categorized .. smart, compliant, troublesome, and behind the curve. Unfortunately much of this is experiential in addition to innate ability. Some of the kids we worked with just were never introduced to reading materials, others we found to have various degree of dyslexia or visual challenges. But I digress ..
Elon for instance publicly admits to being on the spectrum. Social skills for these individuals is often problematic and empathy hard to develop. Add a wealthy and privileged up bringing, you pretty much have the recipe for narcissism, greed and continuous need for the spotlight. This is the part where EQ comes it ... ability to fully leverage IQ is bolstered where empathy and the ability to see and understand the needs of self and others leads to next level of creativity and implementation of IQ to purposeful ends. Right? Without humility other virtues are superficial .. yes St Augustine and is the opposite of pride.
And we love a winner don't we? But let's peel back the 'success' of Elon Musk. Was it his IQ or funding related to the wealth close to his family and thus ability to attend Penn? Or to fund business start ups and join with the likes of Peter Thiel and others? I feel like the wealth and a little education allowed these fellows to grab the low hanging fruit at the beginning of the internet era.
Now what we have are essentially oligarchs with the EQ of a three to five year old running around with unlimited wealth and chainsaws.
Yes, I bought the book after the third listen of the post.
I’d put it this way: they’re acting like spoiled brats. Maybe they’ve had TOO much success and not enough loss or failure. People don’t mature by success alone, do they? Might it not require some real set back to force a readjustment in one’s attitude?
It’s awfully insulting for someone in the cheap seats to witness these guys acting like they know best, acting like the very experts they disdain, acting like they deserve my adulation because they say so. Get over yourselves.
In our efforts to understand why the high-tech magnates have become the financing directors of the (permanent) Christonazi conquest of the (failed) United States, I fear we are overlooking the legacies of their childhoods – specifically that it is almost axiomatic they were savagely bullied during their K-12 years.
Despite innumerable claims to the contrary, U.S. K-12 education whether public or private is founded on the unwritten, two-pronged policy of athletics über alles and the production of "well-adjusted" (i.e. reliably obedient) graduates forever psychologically strait-jacketed by the mediocrity demanded by capitalism to produce its necessarily submissive workforce. As a result, any exceptionally bright student who dares display significant intellectual prowess – often even if buffered by notable athletic skill – is scorned, jeered, beaten, raped, sometimes even murdered.
Violations of the rules that forbid such predatory behavior are universally ignored by the public school authorities, and even in parochial or private schools wherein the authorities are willing to defy U.S. cultural norms and protectively intervene, adequate enforcement is impossible beyond school-grounds.
In this context of manifest moral imbecility – which thanks to high tech is infinitely more traumatic today than it was in my K-12 years (1945-1958) – the billionaire-nurd übermenschen’s fiscal capture of humanity’s most ecogenocidal political ideology and resultant mastery of its MAGAT minions (as bottomlessly horrible, terrifying and ultimately apocalyptic as it is), is nevertheless no more psychologically complex than simple vengeance.
Despite not diving deeper into the psychological issues you mention which are spot on, the conversation did address the bros' need for people to think they're super awesome.
I seem to recall, for instance, very shortly after the 'Glass Onion' came out, Elon made the decisive move to publicly embrace the far right (recall that the villain in 'Glass Onion' was a very thinly veiled depiction of Musk).
Spiritually stunted (fear of death a big indicator of this);
Arrogance (when you BELIEVE that you know everything there is to know, whatever curiosity about 'how the world works' gets stunted AND that $ can bring others around to your point of view);
Limited knowledge of world and American history and the need for rules for civilization to exist;
Never satisfied with what they have (spiritual issue again).
I could enumerate more, but will stop here. When I mention 'spiritual,' I do NOT mean 'religious.' They have a "hole in the soul" that neither money nor power can ever fill. Only love for the other and all of nature and the cosmos will fill that hole.
The catchall phrase you are looking for is "Narcissistic Personality Disorder."
The hate. The rage. The feeling that they aren't appreciated enough. The distain for expertise. The sexism and racism. The insatiable thirst for attention and adulation. The lack of ethics, empathy, or respect for the rule of law. The "too much and never enough." And on and on and on...
It's personality disorder. It's not just Rump. T-Heil, Mush, Prance and their "philosopher" Moldbug are classic cases of highly function and HIGHLY DISORDERED people.
I refrain from using diagnostic labels such as NPD. Why?
My disciple's Ethical Code (I'm a retired I-O psychologist who taught that Code and assessment courses that helped dx such disorders using tools like the MMPI-2 to grad students). Affixing a dx label without having formally evaluated someone (interviews, MMPI-2, review of records, etc) is unethical. Full stop.
While I see behaviors in these men suggestive of NPD, it is much more than that; hence my elaboration of the spiritual stunting AND lack of ever being truly loved (yeah, and that sounds Freudian for sure).
How do you separate narcissistic personality disorder from borderline personality disorder? Kidding!
Agree we shouldn’t diagnose from here but it’s a lot of fun!
Now look at authoritarian personalities, that comes from childhood adversity and bad genetics… as well.
Neurosciences are ignored by msm
No free will.
Spirituality? LOL! Sorry! Makes me think of these medieval cults and how everyone starts chanting after other sneeze kind of nonsense.
You already know and kind of said it: Not enough physical love as a child and you’re broken as an adult.
That’s not opinion, Robert Sapolsky and Sam Harris both report those folks don’t release vasopressin or oxytocin when they touch people they love, that’s why some don’t like to be touched as adults. Thats the “no free will” part.
You are totally right! Dreaming of a "Roman style dictator" suggests that the dreamer has only cursory knowledge of history. The Romans chose a dictator when everything else had failed and the man selected was a highly respected prominent retired citizen, generally someone with a solid military background. Trump would have been the last person selected.
Another commonality noted during the interview is their ages (50s to mid 60s). In other words, late Boomers and Gen Xers who were raised on Dr Spock’s advice and TV during the turbulent 1960s-70s. As a member of this age group, it’s always been striking how many of my peers adopted a selfish approach to life because of their perceived trauma from growing up during that era. They seem to assume the idealized TV families with stay at home moms were the norm and they were shortchanged if they were latch key kids. Never mind the reality of earlier generations, where widowhood was fairly common and even intact poor families needed both parents working outside the home.
I was once a tech industry enthusiast, starting in the 1990s, and continuing until about 15 years ago. My enthusiasm began to waver, then disintegrate. It had nothing to do with politics. It was the loss of what I had interpreted, perhaps wrongly, as a spirit of innovation. Silicon Valley had gone corporate, and the only innovation remaining was of the "new ways to extract money" variety. Now these "tech titans" have devolved into money grubbing oligarchs, extracting cash from a captive consumer base and with "AI" being the ultimate heist. A resource and energy hungry industry that has stopped real innovation and thrown its support into a backward looking administration that wants to rejuvenate coal power is not something I have any interest in.
Thanks for pointing out that these mighty thinkers have nothing to say about Trump’s assault on renewable energy and other forms of technological innovation. Apparently we’re going to run massive data centers on coal-based energy and no silly woke environmental regulations either.
How is it that you two white men had this entire conversation without discussing the sexism and racism that is rampant among the tech billionaire class and their acolytes? It’s right there. All that nonsense about “wokeness” and the “excesses of #MeToo.” And yet you two discussed everything but that.
They mentioned it in passing. Your comment seems more like a thread hijack than a fleshed-out point here. There's actually quite a lot here. One of the overall messages is that the tech barons are whiny old guys (by Silicon Valley standards) who have no really new or well articulated ideas and seem uninterested in actual scientific advances. That you might need a more diverse workforce or exposure to some broadening ideas and perspectives gets some mention and could have been elaborated more.
Especially since there WAS a time where, as Silverman put it, “those left wing ideas had a major effect on tech” - the early 2010s drive to get women recognized as engineers and funded as founders, to de-bro the tech club. These guys really didn’t like the suggestion that maybe their profession wasn’t a pure expression of exclusively masculine rationality.
Separate stuff! Think male sexism is more about how their mothers treated them. Rich or poor. No real respect for women if mom was bad. Think Jan 6 crowd, bad parenting all over.
Not to put it all on Mom’s, but it’s a heavy load they carry: once abortion was made legal here in the 1970s, 20 years later as a direct result we saw a drop in crime across the nation. Those are the effects of unwanted pregnancy or any mother in a storm. Moms are so important. Bad parenting breeds everything from dysfunction to crime to serial killers.
All this explains why social programs are much needed.
I can remember they tried to give the credit to that silly mayor’s no broken windows policy in New York City. But the no broken windows didn’t explain why crime dropped across the nation back in the 1990s. Robert Sapolsky said they now know the drop was abortion.
Many people will point out how they went through some sort of similar childhood adversity or trauma and they didn’t turn out a criminal, neo Nazi member or serial killer. But that’s the difference in genetics. Epigenetics is genes and environment. Sapolsky reports that only 5% of any gene is code for the proteins it will produce. The other 95% of the gene are the complex switches that turn it on or off.
His book behave, worth a read. A lot to unpack there, but he explains a lot, including psychopathic violence, love/hate, fear, aggression, etc., even transgenderism has a biology.
Although I am closer to the tech bros' view on race and gender issues than you,, I agree that it's absurd to ignore these issues if we're asking about their motives.
I strongly suspect that if cultural progressives had stuck to their agenda and messaging from ca 2010, these tech guys would still be supporting Democrats.
A few of the tech billionaires were born and educated in South Africa. They attended elite private schools, had servants in their homes. How much does that experience affect their "gilded rage"?
Also, why did they end up in South Africa in the first place? I’m reminded of the eye opening book “ Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” (Alexandra Fuller, 2002). Her parents were incompetent alcoholics living on the dole in England in 1968 when they decided to move to Rhodesia to support the white minority government in its bush war against the majority African people. They continued to be incompetent alcoholic parents but now they could torment other people while still abusing their children. It makes one wonder about Musk and Thiel’s parents and could help explain why they seem to be so screwed up. It also challenges the traditional narrative of maltreated white immigrants seeking to escape European oppression.
Musk's grandfather migrated to Africa from Canada in 1950. He was not particularly wealthy. Thiel was born in Germany. His family moved to the US in 1968, then to South Africa in 1971, and then back to the US in 1977. His father worked as an engineer for various mining companies. While in South Africa, the family lived in an area that was heavily sympathetic to the Nazi cause. Keep in mind here that he was a young boy while in SA, coming permanently to the US when he was ten.
South Africa and, in the case of Thiel, Namibia. There are many articles about the possible effects of growing up in one of these countries, for example
You do such a great job on explainers, Paul, might you do a multi-part piece on the history of hedge funds, private capital and how the super-wealthy came to invest in these, rather than plain old stocks and bonds? I worked in retail investing for 25 years and my middle class clients basically owned mutual funds or individual securities, but not much in the way of leveraged or derivative assets. And the period from the mid-80’s to the early 2000’s was a good time to be a traditional investor.
Yet the really wealthy seem to have access to an investment world apart from average Americans. And how did we end up with so many billionaire investment managers? As retail brokers/advisors we were well compensated, but nobody was getting super-wealthy by virtue of having a large, successful practice. The e-trade canard, “Where are the clients yachts?” was cute advertising, but mostly hype. It was people work and you showed up for your clients or you didn’t last.
What seems to have happened is a shift from investors who believe the best fundamentals will produce the best returns to investors who believe their investment manager will be able to find the bigger fool. Those investment managers actively shop the public market for that buyer because public companies have found that when their business fundamentals don’t drive the market there are stock manipulations that can. At the end of the day, the hedge is that the retail customer is a strong candidate for the bigger fool.
My thought was more along the lines of a market (and SEC) that allows early stage investors to exit early by taking unprofitable, unproven, basically speculative companies public and profiting both on the liquidity and growth from the additional public capital. And, all that is backstopped by hoarding cash for stock buybacks that boost the stock price instead of using it to boost jobs and innovation. I agree though that it is all fed by a casino mentality focused on winning or fear of missing out than sustainable growth of the economy.
What comes across to me from this discussion is that these tech bros are 1) emotionally immature; 2) intellectually lazy; and 3) parasitic.
Considering a "seasteading" or "islandsteading" group. They will need food grown and produced by farmers and factories within a functioning government supported by its citizens. They will need medical care from physicians trained by a functioning government supported by its citizens. Etc. Yet, they want to contribute nothing, just live on their luxury yacht or island, taking what the rest of the world has to offer, just doing whatever they please, giving nothing in return. That is selfish and immature.
Given the foregoing, I must take issue with Prof. Krugman's characterization of Musk as "self-made." The term "self-made" to me is like the proverbial fingernails on the chalkboard. No one is self-made, because we all require the surrounding society to succeed. Could Musk have become a trillionaire from EV and spaceship businesses in, say, Sudan? Why did he move to the U.S. instead of Sudan or even remain in South Africa?
As Prof. Krugman can attest, becoming an expert in any field requires years of hard work and study, with lots of critical thinking and analysis. The tech bros don't want to put in the effort, but want the respect that experts rightfully receive. Their answer is to denigrate and disparage the experts, what I call "onedownmanship." It is reprehensibe and un-American.
It's more a matter of recognizing that no one person can comprehend it all. Everybody has their own area of expertise and should recognize what they don't know. It's Ricardo's concept of comparative advantage. I like to express it this way: "Do what you do best, and leave it for others to do the rest."
Musk's Boring Company has begun a tunneling project in Nashville, so not entirely true that the Tech Bros disdain physical projects. In usual Musk (and Trump) fashion he bypassed the approval process for a project of this sort and magnitude. Fits with the complaint commonly advanced these days that nothing physical can get done because of over-regulation. However, in the list of projects that we really need, where does the Boring Company fit? Way down the list, I'd say. Global warming, on the other hand, is near the top of the list and the Tech Bros are in the process of making it worse with their giant data centers, even if they utilize nuclear power which itself is not clean energy. Making social media (and AI) safer should be at the top of the list but obviously isn't or they'd have fixed it. Another physical project is going to Mars, way down most people's list I'd wager, yet Musk is fixated on it, I suppose because of the historical place in history it would deliver to him. He and Trump share that characteristic.
Tunneling tech would be an important ability if one plans to live on a planet with no livable atmosphere. Nashville could be simply a learning experience. The sooner Elon gets to Mars the better off we will all be.
I've read that global warming has already made large nuclear power plants unfeasible in many areas by making the water warm enough that it can't be used for cooling. There is, however, a push for development of small reactors (I think Westinghouse is a player there).
Thank you for this, Paul Krugman and Jacob Silverman. As a mental health therapist (retired), I see the delusional grandiosity shared by these wealthy tech bros, and am gobsmacked. In my profession, we would say they have a split intelligence: high technical abstract abilities, but extremely low emotional intelligence. Another was of saying, I guess, that they are emotionally disabled.
One thing that crosses my mind is brain-hemisphere interaction. According to what I've read about that, the left hemisphere tends to specialise in choosing specific targets for action, while the right hemisphere tends to specialise in scanning the whole field of possibilities. Using both capacities is important in knowing what's going on. Getting 'stuck' in pouncing on the target without making a survey of what's actually forming and taking place, would support things like assuming it's possible to just go to Mars and live there, without knowing much about how life works right here on this planet.
Retired climate scientist here. And, noting PK’s pedigree, I’ve known and worked with four Nobel laureates, all in Physics: Eric Cornell, Carl Weiman, David Wineland, and now, John Martinis. What they all have in common is a certain measure of humility. Eric and David, whom I knew best, are as gracious and unassuming as anyone you’d ever meet. In fact, you’d never know who they were, or what they’ve accomplished, if you met them on the street or at a casual social gathering. That is class.
The difference is stark comparing these “rock stars of science” versus the tech bros like Musk, Thiel, Bezos, Andreeson, etc. The former earned their honors the hard way, through many long years of assiduous and dedicated scientific research. The Tech Bros, though, came into fame and fortune quickly, and much of it through sheer luck (a discussion for a later time). But, suffice it to say, it was not by playing the long game of serious scientific inquiry or peer-reviewed scholarship. Therein lies the difference.
There’s a business principle known as, “The Potent Director Fallacy,” which can be summarized succinctly with, “People in high places have no special knowledge or skill around any social or business system solely by virtue of their status.”
Thank you, luck indeed! They were all reliant - be it innovation around hardware, software or data on the existence of the underlying communications network complements of Bell Labs (and its post TA96 incarnations) which is where the real genius existed.
NYT published an article about Aaron Greenspan (former Fed Reserve chairman Alan has no children, so don't know if they are related) who did some research into how Musk was able to manipulate himself into his lucky fortune. Greenspan is condescended as a loser ruminating over his sour grapes by many, but many savvy business types do seem to have that particular skill set.
A very enlightening conversation. But one thought kept popping into my head as I was reading the transcript. This seems like an appropriate time to use Occam's Razor and apply Cipolla's 5 universal laws of human stupidity to understand and explain: What the fuck is the matter with these people?? https://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/
Enlighting and frightening. I work hard to understand the world that parrts of it are so opaque to me. Thank you for your help with this. Even if all this is happening, there are more of us then there are of them. Courage.
Recall that just because someone is successful in one thing it doesn't mean they are successful in all. So these guys made some technology; it doesn't mean they know jack about people or society or democracy or anything else. They have money, but they are bored. And they have money so no one who makes their money off them tells them they are full of it. And they have money, and, surprise, they found out it didn't make them happy. And but for Citizens United, their money wouldn't matter to the rest of us. But there are millions of us and just a handful of them. And when this is over, with Reconstruction 2.0 the influence of money is going to be ripped out of the political system.
Fabulous interview. The fact that this country appears to be led by a group of psychologically stunted man-children who are terrified of dying is terrifying but my favorite line that I'll hold on to is Paul Krugman saying that he's probably happier than all of them. I feel the same way.
I found this conversation fascinating and can't wait to read the book. It just occurred to me that there may be a psychological perspective that’s worth exploring that might help shed light on this rage and perpetual unhappiness that seems to be fuelling these guys' lust for power.
You did touch on aspects of it when you spoke about how some of them may be disillusioned that their lofty dreams of making things/changing the world have not come to pass, how they may be struggling with the sense that they're getting old and despite their immense wealth they have not really made much of a difference, and the world is not recognising them as the heroes they're imagining themselves to be.
In my field of research, which is called ‘adult development’ (or vertical development), we look at how the psychological complexity of adults continues to grow through the lifetime through predictable stages. We look at cognitive complexity (how sophisticated is one’s thinking, how many perspectives can they hold, can they zoom in/out of a situation to see the bigger picture alongside the details). But we also look at other types of maturity, for example, moral maturity – how able is an adult to operate according to a very clear moral compass that is intrinsic, internalised (versus earlier stages of moral maturity where people follow their self-interest as their sole guiding light). This field also studies ‘ego-development’ – how complex is the narrative an individual tells themselves about the world and their role in it, and are they able to deconstruct that narrative and build a new one when context evolves. All these strands of maturity contribute to enabling people to adapt to life and operate with day-to-day wisdom – not something we see much in the tech bros that make up the topic of this conversation.
I would argue, through the lenses I mentioned above, that some of these behaviours we are seeing – radicalisation, power hoarding, greed, righteous anger – are all symptoms of people having gotten stuck on the psychological development ladder. Their ‘achiever’ mindsets (this is one of the stages we use to measure maturity) has gotten them to the success they created for themselves, but once there, they did not have the capacity to de-construct their worldviews and grow themselves so they could deal with emotional pain and cognitive dissonance brought about by life challenges - the inevitable decline of ageing, the disillusionment of one’s kids making choices you don’t agree with (see Musk’s obsessions around ‘woke virus’). They continue to operate in the world from the same level of psychological maturity they likely had in their 20s’, but that is leading to some seriously flawed, toxic and, at the moment, profoundly dangerous behaviours.
I’d also argue that many of them have long had a big gap between their cognitive development (many are smart people) and their moral-emotional development (which is lagging). As their material power has increased, this gap has become more visible and its real-world consequences terrifying. This turned into a much too long comment, but I find the perspective fascinating and hope more people consider this angle in trying to make sense of what is happening to us.
Fascinating comment. I'm not a Ph.D (I got my collateral while my wife got hers) and I am a retired cop. When I worked the jail (the first 18 months of my 30 year career) I made an observation that I could tell, roughly, when a person started using drugs by where their emotional development seemed to be stuck. I remember working the women's housing unit, and watching the 15 or so inmates that had the custodial status to be able to attend a church service (completely in house, but it was co-ed in that the male inmates sat on one side and the female inmates on another) "get dressed" for church. The jail issued the same identical clothes (green pullover, v-neck shirt, and elastic waistband pants) to each inmate, and these women would be trading shirts to see which one looked best. They reminded me of my sister and her friend in late elementary/junior high getting ready for school, and trading clothes.
I followed up with some questions over the next week, and found that the age range of first drug use was 12-15. (I did not, at that time, follow with any inquires regarding sexual abuse history; I was very new and did not know the lifetime impacts of that history yet.)
Wow! I think your example here is so powerful, and it does lead me to think of the impacts of early trauma on effectively 'freezing' someone's development at an early stage.
Early trauma is huge and impacts not only intellect, social ability but physical health in the long run. But there are other types of issues that can stilt development within an otherwise 'normal' environment ... smartness does not always equate to success or ability to operate within social construct.
I think you see that with JD Vance. He didn't have a normal upbringing, so hence he throws his wife and her religion under the bus. He could have just directed the question elsewhere but he doesn't know how. He's literally an example of "arrested development." A great show, BTW.
But there are many who survive 'abnormal' upbringing and come out the other side as highly successful worthy people. What is the difference? What does one have that the other does not? What part of the development is arrested? EQ is what I believe is missing for these individuals though they can appear successful they are none the less incomplete.
How do you know what you are seeing. It is a well know phenomenon that when people are put in certain social environments that the environment reinforces infantilization. Take a look at assisted living with people that were successful before they moved there.
Well, keep in mind they were in jail, so there’s a smorgasbord of potential factors. As a young cop, that was what I noticed. No psychological or sociological investigation, just a cop managing a lhousing area.
Jail and assisted living, different but with the similarity that someone else is making decisions on how they live. This think that is what makes them seem like kids. I don't doubt your observation, but I would look more at the cause.
Interesting. What drugs are we talking about?
Usually meth. Sometimes marijuana first.
I have worked in the field of child development psychology. This has given me a great insight into adult development psychology. I believe this field is by far the most important work I have ever done and the most important work our society should be engaged in. It’s now to the point of life and death for our society.
This is all good and relevant, though it may be even simpler than that: too much power concentrated into too few hands, which runs counter to democracy…
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
— Lord Acton, 1887
I am surely biased on this one, since this is my work, but I do agree with you that an unerstanding of the mechanisms and levers of life-long cognitive and psycho-emotional development seems to be very much an existential skill for humanity at the moment...
As a 10-year old I developed a dream of myself as a concert pianist because I mastered a Rachmininoff Piano Concerto and created a highly styled version of Autumn Leaves. Quite perfect and still beautiful to this day when my hands work and my memory does not fail me. A very frail base for such a belief in my greatness, given that I neither acquired the theororetical background nor the requisite ability to read musical notation upon which such a dream is dependent. I own a piano, but do not tour, obviously. Wealth didn't afford me the privilege to live out any of my dillusions of greatness. These men seemed to achieve wealth early based upon narrow portfolios, as well, and over-priced through it probably was.
These tech guys are brilliant within very narrow confines. Their social/emotional intelligence is very lacking. Their actions indicate that they are emotionally immature and not well rounded. They just do not pick up or process social cues.
Right on.
Thank you for this comment. As a retired psychologist who has always had an interest in adult development, I think you are on to something here. As I read the transcript, what came to my mind was an image of children playing with loaded guns.
That's a powerful (and terrifying) image. It makes me think of this quote from Edward O. Wilson: "The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. It is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall."
Is it because we admire their intellect and wealth over their (lack of) humanity? Do we covet the intellect thinking (wrongly) that it guarantees access to wealth? Or that the intellect guarantees the rightness of their opinion over others?
This was in fact a bit of an argument at my house yesterday. Unfortunately Elon was on Joe Rogan yesterday, and more so now I have to listen to the damn thing to understand what was being communicated at least from what the listener was able to take away which did not align with what I know (experientially) about transfers of benefit payments (Federal/State/Local) to recipient via govt sources and their traceability. Yes some dead people do get benefits but not to the extent portrayed.
or chainsaws.
great analysis....I personally think that most of them are evil sociopaths and live in what was once termed 'richistan' where they live in another realm of reality
Your analysis seems right on the mark!
So..."Arrested Development," then?
It would be nice if it was a funny sitcom instead of sometimes being dangerous or damaging when combined with power and wealth.
I sometimes try to put myself in their shoes to see how their internal dialogs might go, in order for some of these people to be able to take the actions they take.
Perhaps they see many things regarding social morality, and the responsibility for it, as external rather than intrinsic. I have often thought about this, so I am glad you mentioned it. Thus, with an extrinsic mortality mindset, they can separate themselves from their behavior and the harm it might cause. There would also need to be lots of internal justification for what they do, unless they are sociopaths, in convincing themselves that there is some greater good down the road, or something to excuse some of what they do or prioritize. Going there in my head and "shoe wearing" is so disturbing to me and contradictory in the way my own personal narrative goes that I can't do the "their shoes" thing for too long. To me, it is like the upside down world in the Netflix series Stranger Things and is disturbing, but that can be another's normal.
I find it interesting that there are so many psychologists commenting on your post and hanging out reading Krugman early in the am.
I guess the means by which we decide to distribute resources and also allocate power, economics, is really, at its heart, a reflection on the innermost workings of an inner personal narrative about ourselves and the world, about right and wrong. Social power is acquired when some find ways to bring others into a shared narrative and gin up support for it and sometimes themselves, as well, in a society. In doing so they create a common narrative with which to form political policy and laws for society.
I find economics fascinating, as well, so I can see how psychologists can also be drawn to it, especially the way Krugman describes it.
I grew up in a family of PhDs, several were psychologists, and when many decades ago, as a woman about to graduate with a degree in business and economics, I was only offered clerical work, since women were not often allowed in that male dominated world out of an academic setting, back then. So, I went back and studied biological psychology, as well, and then studied primate social behavior.
There was certainly no place for a dyslexic person, like me, in clerical work, for sure, regardless. So, maybe I was lucky that I could simply not be stuffed in the traditional box of female employment that some employers wanted to put me in, since I struggle with spelling and punctuation and far more, and could not even type at the time. So, I decided to continue my studies. The more I studied psychology, the more I thought back on my economics courses, as well, and about how, and why, people do things as a society. It made me love and be fascinated by economics even more.
After my son was born, I worked in an extended-day kindergarten program and there seemed to be a clear differences early on between those who could easily learn some things we consider social behavior norms, like sharing, or even waiting in line, or being willing to not be first in line, etc.
Some had far more trouble adapting to these concepts, and if it was one concept, it was typically all of them. Was this nature or nurture? I could not tell you. It was likely a bit of both. I had a fraternal twin that was prone to rages and I was quiet and an introvert and rather subdued in nature. She was sociable and outgoing and courageous. I was not. She had trouble with honesty and separating the real world from fantasy in engaging with others, and I can't lie if my life depended on it and have a panic attack if I even try, and get worried that someone will find out and it would be a horrible moral disgrace. In her aggressive combative nature in dealing with the word, her inclination, if caught in a lie with concrete proof is always to embellish even more, pivot, and never back down and never ever admit she was wrong. Being wrong is simply not an option for her. She was a genius, I am learning disabled. We obviously grew up in the same environment, and at the same time. So, was this nature or nurture?
Perhaps some of the kids I worked with had been to preschool and/or had siblings and others did not, so those who did may have had a leg up on concepts of sharing and social skill practice from an early age. I simply don't know.
We simply do not know everything about what makes us who we are.
I can certainly see that something like drug use or an overfocus on something and getting stuck, as you put it in, a personal narrative at a stage in life, could also cause some to not continue to grow and develop even as adults, if they are not having their internal narrative challenged and are not continuing to engage in personal reflection and with the wider world and have severe tunnel vision when it comes to incorporating new information that might contradict their preferred narrative, a narrative that might a basis for their self-esteem.
I love the juxtaposition of psychology and economics in your comment. I wonder if our current economic narrative of infinite growth is not a reflection of our developmental narrative ('you are your material success', 'the only way onwards is upwards'). Is it our limited developmental capacity that prevents us from questioning the economic paradigms that have led us to this point? If so, what would it take for a collective shift in mindset? In my optimistic moments I do hope we can evolve our psychological maturity fast enough to prevent collective collapse. On my pessimistic days I doubt we'll be able to grow up in time...
Education. Exactly what this regime seeks to tear down for the masses. Programs like SNAP, Headstart, Medicaid all help to bring balance and development.
I came to work in the early 80's, the days of the Wall Street 'fat cats', the M&A moguls, the quants, now hedged fund bros, who by virtue of their intellect were richer than the rest of us and we all deified them for their successes, mostly insider trading born of wealth and position it turns out.
We need to see they are not the gods or heroes we thought them to be and for crying out loud ... trickle down does NOT trickle down. Left to their own devices they are destroying the very masses that feed both ego and pocket book of the oligarchs. They clearly lack the capacity to see the endgame, which we have the populace and power to create if we can get over the hero worship and tear down a different wall.
Look to the neurosciences, they explain all behaviors.
Read or YouTube Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky‘s book, Behave. No free will.
The press reported it as the rich will steal candy from a baby, Sapolsky explained what really happened:
Paraphrasing- “ have people do some task in the lab and tell them when they’re finished there’s a bowl of candy by the door and on their way out and they can help themselves to it. And that any leftover candy will be given to ‘some kids.’ The wealthier the person the more candy they took.”
He also explains how dopamine habituates so that what was the thrill of a lifetime yesterday, you’ll come to expect today and it won’t be enough tomorrow.
Next, experiences change brain biology. We see it with trauma and PTSD. Become megarich turns the brain to mega greed. And Silicon Valley is following Moldbug, real name is Yarvin.
The plan is to destroy democracy to protect their wealth.
Finally Heather Cox Richardson explains that the libertarian party comes directly from the very conservative slaveholders who didn’t want the government involved in building roads or schools, etc. because they didn’t want the government to look into slavery.
It swings back to the neurosciences saying “that all conservative views are rooted in authoritarianism and not worth considering” - Robert Sapolsky.
Back in the 70s, I read of some work that reported that, back during the Depression, hoboes (migrant workers) discovered that poorer people were much more supporting; the wealthier people would turn them away. This work was coming back to light during the stagflation era of the 70s as Sociologists discovered that it was also true then.
Rich kids simply may be unaware that there is not simply more candy in the cupboard to refill the bowl. A poor kid may have experienced limitation issues on a daily basis.
These are important observations with which one can see correlational behavior, but then assigning a cause is simply mere speculation and unscientific without further study.
If someone wants to believe wealth causes greed they will simply look at things like this, this way. It is kind of like Kennedy and his Tylenol. If pain and fever for pregnant women has a statistically significant relationship to babies born with ADHD, and these women take more tylenol because of pain, the actual cause could be what is causing pain and fever or the pain and fever itself, not Tylenol. He has mistaken correlation with causation. One has to try to isolate a variable to see, etc and they have already done this and ruled out Tylenol.
Now of course, I am looking at your comment though my own perception in that I do not think wealth causes greed, and I do not have enough evidence either. It could be the case and I could be wrong, I just do not see any proof from what this research presents.
However, yes, a brain will habituate to neurotransmitters like dopamine, meaning one may need a larger source of stimulus. But one would also have to get a rush from wealth and power in the first place.
Some rich and powerful folks could be addicted to it, others not so. However, one would have to see wealth and power as a positive stimulus. As an introvert and an anxious person, I repel from such things like a bad smell and want to hide. So, no dopamine rush for me. Put me in the spotlight and give me a bunch of cash and it would not cause a desire for more. In addition, world domination sounds like a horror film in my world and an everyday miserable grind.
Maybe one's personal narrative forms the neuronal connections and channels for what is considered a reward stimulus for the brain, I do not know. Once addicted the reverse can also be true in that the brain causes to get you to find ways to get that next fix - addiction changes the structure of the brain itself. Talk about getting stuck - you even have a different brain, but one need not be stuck forever.
I don't think wealth causes greed. I do think that greed results in wealth many times.
OK - now I see - I made an incorrect assumption as to what the reply was in regards to. I will change my response. Actually, I might as well delete it as it no longer is relevant.
"Nevermind" as Emily Litella would say on SNLs weekend update.
I think wealth can cause experiential limitations. Imagine the myriad of things we do without thinking .. grocery shop, prepare meals, budget, fill the gas tank, balance the checkbook ...
Another great program I helped on was School to Work. It was for 7th/8th grade social studies where each kid was given a salary (based on grades which I was not a fan of) and had to get housing, food, transportation and the expectation was to be able to save money as well. I provided checkbooks and banking tools (savings and loan rates) for the kids to use for these purposes. They had to write checks, balance checkbooks and see how much they had left. Some squandered and others saved.
You are right, we do not need to be stuck forever, but we DO need to be willing to recognize we ARE stuck. This takes humility and introspection which can be a very hard pill to swallow.
Think they were adults, not kids.
And they didn’t define anyone as being rich, it was wealth. “The wealthier the person the more candy they took.” They were not consciously aware of what they were doing. This is how brain biology works. Nothing to do with your conscious mind. Your conscious mind is the prefrontal cortex, the front part, it’s the rest of the brain is what they’re talking about.
It explains why the rich as a group refuse to pay taxes as a group. It’s why they all turn to schemes to hide their wealth when they have so much of it. Is Elon Musk worth $1 trillion pay package? It’s that kind of absurdity, that’s their world.
As for the rest of the brain, take racism as an example. Per Sapolsky, Racism starts with the amygdala or the fear center part of the brain, it’s located in the temporal lobe areas bilaterally. When we see a person of a different skin color the amygdala responds within 28 ms, way before conscious awareness. The prefrontal cortex, the thinking part, doesn’t get involved until about 500 ms or half a second later.The prefrontal cortex either increases or decreases the response from the amygdala, this is all seen with Neuro imaging, like functional MRI and with the bigger 3 Tesla magnets they use now they can see way deep into the brain and the last five years have been revealing according to Sapolsky.
Absolutely no free will.
Destroying democracy to protect their wealth implies that they want to protect their separateness from the rest of humanity and their presumed superiority. I can’t quite remember the quote—There must be an in-group that is protected by the law but not bound by it. And an out-group that is bound by the law but not protected by it.
The slavers were against internal improvement as they were called then because they didn't want the North to get any richer, and thus more powerful politically, and they were opposed to tariffs which were favored in the North to protect its developing manufacturing base.
I was addressing kind of narrow historical point. Greed is one of the original sins for all of humanity. US Protestantism added this wrinkle: wealth was a sign of God's favor. Ergo, being poor meant that in God's eyes, the poor were immoral, and thus it was easy to dismiss them as unworthy. Today's evangelical Christians believe this, and if they have doubts about it, the prosperity gospel preachers are there to get them back on the path. So, yes, some people are greedy...poor want to be rich, rich man wants to be king, and a king ain't satisfied 'til he rules everything.
You are essentially correct. But I think greed is innate, not learned, although it can be learned. One cannot ignore religion, man made or inspired. It has caused a lot of problems in human history, but not per se, but how people took advantage of it, or used it. Or discriminated by it.
Look at this way-- US Protestant religion validates wealth. Thus it justifies greed. Your last sentence is right on the money.
Your comment is very interesting. I'm an amateur, but have been reading peer-reviewed papers on personality for about 18y. My late brother-in-law had authoritarian personality, so I spent the first 15y or so on that, then branched out to the question of why some are immune to propaganda and others aren't. My own experience with my brother-in-law, plus the papers I read on that subject, convinced me that people with AP have arrested psychological development. Sometimes when talking to my b-i-l I got the impression that I was talking to a young child.
Glad you brought up morality; I haven't quite figured that one out yet. But will bring up what Hannah Arendt wrote in "Eichmann in Jerusalem" about the impression she had of Adolf Eichmann at his trial—that his problem was one of a failure to think. What she called "thoughtlessness" is an inability to put oneself in the place of others, especially when they're suffering. Now I know that doesn't solve the psychologist's question of *how* such things happen, but I do find it a powerful diagnosis.
Excellent added insights. As I read I was thinking these problems are not new. We all journey to these same places as we age or have experiences. Wealth, as far as I view it, doesn't change the bare facts that to grow as a human being, to use your cognitive advantages and capacity, involves going through these stages. Otherwise one is faced with stagnation and disconnection to the very real needs of human beings. Humanities and the other Sciences do give one a context for this shared living organism requirement. While touting their genetic and cognitive advantages perhaps shutting out other areas of cognitive enrichment have short changed some.
Which leads me to a curiosity of do these men (all men mentioned) not have a basic understanding that diversity is essential to all living organisms for survival? Humans are no exception. Designing systems, or the ultimate system to automate the distribution of Earth's resources across the planet, cannot ignore diversity. Democracy incorporates the natural distribution of human diversification and the effects of that diversification on all other living organisms. Why organize another governance style effectively destroying such diversity? It does not make sense. To take it to the door of these Tech Oligarchs... it does not compute.
Great insight here! When I worked as a journalist in the tech world of the 80s and early 90s I definitely perceived a kind of extended adolescence among these entrepreneurs, mostly male. It's terrible to consider that many of them have stalled at that level of ego development but that seems true of this new crop of tech titans, especially. For a while I thought that earlier members of the generation of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs might have moved further into adulthood. Now I'm not so sure since Jobs died too early, it seems, to have ever shed his narcissism, and Gates is becoming something of an enigma as he pulls back from his earlier concerns about the climate crisis. Doesn't someone like Elon Musk seem like a big kid--but on ketamine!? These men are becoming ever more dangerous as they engage in geopolitics and militarism.
So these folks haven't been praised enough, eh? well, let's give them pats on the back and send them off to do something useful for humanity - praising them along the way, "good dog" type of thing.
Well a lot of them want to go to Mars, so why don't we give them the attention they crave to encourage them fund their one-way ticket?
Exactly, go buy Epstein's Island, it is probably for sale and create the Tech Bro community they dream of. See how long that lasts.
"They continue to operate in the world from the same level of psychological maturity they likely had in their 20s’, but that is leading to some seriously flawed, toxic and, at the moment, profoundly dangerous behaviours."
Bam! I had a lot of the same thoughts and observations listening (three times) to this post. This, in fact, has been a long time fringe discussion within my family for decades. While I am in no way qualified to opine besides personal experience growing up in and around some very intelligent people.
IQ vs EQ has been the basis of these perspectives particularly as to how young minds are fostered and develop into adulthood ... and yes, gender bias does play a role and probably saved me from being a total nut job. As children enter school they are quickly categorized .. smart, compliant, troublesome, and behind the curve. Unfortunately much of this is experiential in addition to innate ability. Some of the kids we worked with just were never introduced to reading materials, others we found to have various degree of dyslexia or visual challenges. But I digress ..
Elon for instance publicly admits to being on the spectrum. Social skills for these individuals is often problematic and empathy hard to develop. Add a wealthy and privileged up bringing, you pretty much have the recipe for narcissism, greed and continuous need for the spotlight. This is the part where EQ comes it ... ability to fully leverage IQ is bolstered where empathy and the ability to see and understand the needs of self and others leads to next level of creativity and implementation of IQ to purposeful ends. Right? Without humility other virtues are superficial .. yes St Augustine and is the opposite of pride.
And we love a winner don't we? But let's peel back the 'success' of Elon Musk. Was it his IQ or funding related to the wealth close to his family and thus ability to attend Penn? Or to fund business start ups and join with the likes of Peter Thiel and others? I feel like the wealth and a little education allowed these fellows to grab the low hanging fruit at the beginning of the internet era.
Now what we have are essentially oligarchs with the EQ of a three to five year old running around with unlimited wealth and chainsaws.
Yes, I bought the book after the third listen of the post.
I’d put it this way: they’re acting like spoiled brats. Maybe they’ve had TOO much success and not enough loss or failure. People don’t mature by success alone, do they? Might it not require some real set back to force a readjustment in one’s attitude?
It’s awfully insulting for someone in the cheap seats to witness these guys acting like they know best, acting like the very experts they disdain, acting like they deserve my adulation because they say so. Get over yourselves.
In our efforts to understand why the high-tech magnates have become the financing directors of the (permanent) Christonazi conquest of the (failed) United States, I fear we are overlooking the legacies of their childhoods – specifically that it is almost axiomatic they were savagely bullied during their K-12 years.
Despite innumerable claims to the contrary, U.S. K-12 education whether public or private is founded on the unwritten, two-pronged policy of athletics über alles and the production of "well-adjusted" (i.e. reliably obedient) graduates forever psychologically strait-jacketed by the mediocrity demanded by capitalism to produce its necessarily submissive workforce. As a result, any exceptionally bright student who dares display significant intellectual prowess – often even if buffered by notable athletic skill – is scorned, jeered, beaten, raped, sometimes even murdered.
Violations of the rules that forbid such predatory behavior are universally ignored by the public school authorities, and even in parochial or private schools wherein the authorities are willing to defy U.S. cultural norms and protectively intervene, adequate enforcement is impossible beyond school-grounds.
In this context of manifest moral imbecility – which thanks to high tech is infinitely more traumatic today than it was in my K-12 years (1945-1958) – the billionaire-nurd übermenschen’s fiscal capture of humanity’s most ecogenocidal political ideology and resultant mastery of its MAGAT minions (as bottomlessly horrible, terrifying and ultimately apocalyptic as it is), is nevertheless no more psychologically complex than simple vengeance.
Despite not diving deeper into the psychological issues you mention which are spot on, the conversation did address the bros' need for people to think they're super awesome.
I seem to recall, for instance, very shortly after the 'Glass Onion' came out, Elon made the decisive move to publicly embrace the far right (recall that the villain in 'Glass Onion' was a very thinly veiled depiction of Musk).
Commonalities among these tech bros:
Emotionally stunted (low EQ);
Spiritually stunted (fear of death a big indicator of this);
Arrogance (when you BELIEVE that you know everything there is to know, whatever curiosity about 'how the world works' gets stunted AND that $ can bring others around to your point of view);
Limited knowledge of world and American history and the need for rules for civilization to exist;
Never satisfied with what they have (spiritual issue again).
I could enumerate more, but will stop here. When I mention 'spiritual,' I do NOT mean 'religious.' They have a "hole in the soul" that neither money nor power can ever fill. Only love for the other and all of nature and the cosmos will fill that hole.
The catchall phrase you are looking for is "Narcissistic Personality Disorder."
The hate. The rage. The feeling that they aren't appreciated enough. The distain for expertise. The sexism and racism. The insatiable thirst for attention and adulation. The lack of ethics, empathy, or respect for the rule of law. The "too much and never enough." And on and on and on...
It's personality disorder. It's not just Rump. T-Heil, Mush, Prance and their "philosopher" Moldbug are classic cases of highly function and HIGHLY DISORDERED people.
And they are running the world.
Thanking for reading & commenting.
I refrain from using diagnostic labels such as NPD. Why?
My disciple's Ethical Code (I'm a retired I-O psychologist who taught that Code and assessment courses that helped dx such disorders using tools like the MMPI-2 to grad students). Affixing a dx label without having formally evaluated someone (interviews, MMPI-2, review of records, etc) is unethical. Full stop.
While I see behaviors in these men suggestive of NPD, it is much more than that; hence my elaboration of the spiritual stunting AND lack of ever being truly loved (yeah, and that sounds Freudian for sure).
Yes, very disordered and dangerous men.
How do you separate narcissistic personality disorder from borderline personality disorder? Kidding!
Agree we shouldn’t diagnose from here but it’s a lot of fun!
Now look at authoritarian personalities, that comes from childhood adversity and bad genetics… as well.
Neurosciences are ignored by msm
No free will.
Spirituality? LOL! Sorry! Makes me think of these medieval cults and how everyone starts chanting after other sneeze kind of nonsense.
You already know and kind of said it: Not enough physical love as a child and you’re broken as an adult.
That’s not opinion, Robert Sapolsky and Sam Harris both report those folks don’t release vasopressin or oxytocin when they touch people they love, that’s why some don’t like to be touched as adults. Thats the “no free will” part.
You know about Yarvin!
Read Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, it explains much of this.
Personality disorders come from childhood adversity and the wrong genes. So does the authoritarian personality.
Racism, greed, love/hate, all behaviors have a biochemistry that drives them.
And as we can see, no one can control their biology.
These men are human black holes. They have immense wealth and power,but it's never going to be enough to fill that moral abyss.
And, Mr. Zuckerberg? You're still a socially awkward man, and Facebook has become an enormously annoying product.
They remind me of my ex. Socially stunted, poor at personal relationships.
That wouldn't be surprising.
You are totally right! Dreaming of a "Roman style dictator" suggests that the dreamer has only cursory knowledge of history. The Romans chose a dictator when everything else had failed and the man selected was a highly respected prominent retired citizen, generally someone with a solid military background. Trump would have been the last person selected.
Trump is a TV, social media era politician. He’s able to sway the MAGA base and bring in votes.
Another commonality noted during the interview is their ages (50s to mid 60s). In other words, late Boomers and Gen Xers who were raised on Dr Spock’s advice and TV during the turbulent 1960s-70s. As a member of this age group, it’s always been striking how many of my peers adopted a selfish approach to life because of their perceived trauma from growing up during that era. They seem to assume the idealized TV families with stay at home moms were the norm and they were shortchanged if they were latch key kids. Never mind the reality of earlier generations, where widowhood was fairly common and even intact poor families needed both parents working outside the home.
Missing from this learned comment is a three letter word which explains 80% of the behavior of the tech bro fraternity: sex.
I was once a tech industry enthusiast, starting in the 1990s, and continuing until about 15 years ago. My enthusiasm began to waver, then disintegrate. It had nothing to do with politics. It was the loss of what I had interpreted, perhaps wrongly, as a spirit of innovation. Silicon Valley had gone corporate, and the only innovation remaining was of the "new ways to extract money" variety. Now these "tech titans" have devolved into money grubbing oligarchs, extracting cash from a captive consumer base and with "AI" being the ultimate heist. A resource and energy hungry industry that has stopped real innovation and thrown its support into a backward looking administration that wants to rejuvenate coal power is not something I have any interest in.
Crypto powered by coal. Yuck!
Thanks for pointing out that these mighty thinkers have nothing to say about Trump’s assault on renewable energy and other forms of technological innovation. Apparently we’re going to run massive data centers on coal-based energy and no silly woke environmental regulations either.
How is it that you two white men had this entire conversation without discussing the sexism and racism that is rampant among the tech billionaire class and their acolytes? It’s right there. All that nonsense about “wokeness” and the “excesses of #MeToo.” And yet you two discussed everything but that.
We can't talk about everything important all at once. Try to appreciate the extraordinary, valuable insights that this interview gives us.
They mentioned it in passing. Your comment seems more like a thread hijack than a fleshed-out point here. There's actually quite a lot here. One of the overall messages is that the tech barons are whiny old guys (by Silicon Valley standards) who have no really new or well articulated ideas and seem uninterested in actual scientific advances. That you might need a more diverse workforce or exposure to some broadening ideas and perspectives gets some mention and could have been elaborated more.
Especially since there WAS a time where, as Silverman put it, “those left wing ideas had a major effect on tech” - the early 2010s drive to get women recognized as engineers and funded as founders, to de-bro the tech club. These guys really didn’t like the suggestion that maybe their profession wasn’t a pure expression of exclusively masculine rationality.
I came across a new term recently, ‘caveman masculinity’. Fair point but it really doesn’t apply to these two men and I think we all know that.
Separate stuff! Think male sexism is more about how their mothers treated them. Rich or poor. No real respect for women if mom was bad. Think Jan 6 crowd, bad parenting all over.
Not to put it all on Mom’s, but it’s a heavy load they carry: once abortion was made legal here in the 1970s, 20 years later as a direct result we saw a drop in crime across the nation. Those are the effects of unwanted pregnancy or any mother in a storm. Moms are so important. Bad parenting breeds everything from dysfunction to crime to serial killers.
All this explains why social programs are much needed.
Wow--you brought up something I've never thought about--crime dropped 20 years after abortion was made legal. I've accepted the lead paint connection.
I can remember they tried to give the credit to that silly mayor’s no broken windows policy in New York City. But the no broken windows didn’t explain why crime dropped across the nation back in the 1990s. Robert Sapolsky said they now know the drop was abortion.
Many people will point out how they went through some sort of similar childhood adversity or trauma and they didn’t turn out a criminal, neo Nazi member or serial killer. But that’s the difference in genetics. Epigenetics is genes and environment. Sapolsky reports that only 5% of any gene is code for the proteins it will produce. The other 95% of the gene are the complex switches that turn it on or off.
His book behave, worth a read. A lot to unpack there, but he explains a lot, including psychopathic violence, love/hate, fear, aggression, etc., even transgenderism has a biology.
They had what, maybe an hour?? This subject would take days to cover. While your point is taken...
You are right!
Although I am closer to the tech bros' view on race and gender issues than you,, I agree that it's absurd to ignore these issues if we're asking about their motives.
I strongly suspect that if cultural progressives had stuck to their agenda and messaging from ca 2010, these tech guys would still be supporting Democrats.
A few of the tech billionaires were born and educated in South Africa. They attended elite private schools, had servants in their homes. How much does that experience affect their "gilded rage"?
Also, why did they end up in South Africa in the first place? I’m reminded of the eye opening book “ Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” (Alexandra Fuller, 2002). Her parents were incompetent alcoholics living on the dole in England in 1968 when they decided to move to Rhodesia to support the white minority government in its bush war against the majority African people. They continued to be incompetent alcoholic parents but now they could torment other people while still abusing their children. It makes one wonder about Musk and Thiel’s parents and could help explain why they seem to be so screwed up. It also challenges the traditional narrative of maltreated white immigrants seeking to escape European oppression.
And David Sacks. How could they get through the interview and not mention apartheid South Africa?
Musk's grandfather migrated to Africa from Canada in 1950. He was not particularly wealthy. Thiel was born in Germany. His family moved to the US in 1968, then to South Africa in 1971, and then back to the US in 1977. His father worked as an engineer for various mining companies. While in South Africa, the family lived in an area that was heavily sympathetic to the Nazi cause. Keep in mind here that he was a young boy while in SA, coming permanently to the US when he was ten.
South Africa and, in the case of Thiel, Namibia. There are many articles about the possible effects of growing up in one of these countries, for example
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa
You do such a great job on explainers, Paul, might you do a multi-part piece on the history of hedge funds, private capital and how the super-wealthy came to invest in these, rather than plain old stocks and bonds? I worked in retail investing for 25 years and my middle class clients basically owned mutual funds or individual securities, but not much in the way of leveraged or derivative assets. And the period from the mid-80’s to the early 2000’s was a good time to be a traditional investor.
Yet the really wealthy seem to have access to an investment world apart from average Americans. And how did we end up with so many billionaire investment managers? As retail brokers/advisors we were well compensated, but nobody was getting super-wealthy by virtue of having a large, successful practice. The e-trade canard, “Where are the clients yachts?” was cute advertising, but mostly hype. It was people work and you showed up for your clients or you didn’t last.
What seems to have happened is a shift from investors who believe the best fundamentals will produce the best returns to investors who believe their investment manager will be able to find the bigger fool. Those investment managers actively shop the public market for that buyer because public companies have found that when their business fundamentals don’t drive the market there are stock manipulations that can. At the end of the day, the hedge is that the retail customer is a strong candidate for the bigger fool.
My thought was more along the lines of a market (and SEC) that allows early stage investors to exit early by taking unprofitable, unproven, basically speculative companies public and profiting both on the liquidity and growth from the additional public capital. And, all that is backstopped by hoarding cash for stock buybacks that boost the stock price instead of using it to boost jobs and innovation. I agree though that it is all fed by a casino mentality focused on winning or fear of missing out than sustainable growth of the economy.
What comes across to me from this discussion is that these tech bros are 1) emotionally immature; 2) intellectually lazy; and 3) parasitic.
Considering a "seasteading" or "islandsteading" group. They will need food grown and produced by farmers and factories within a functioning government supported by its citizens. They will need medical care from physicians trained by a functioning government supported by its citizens. Etc. Yet, they want to contribute nothing, just live on their luxury yacht or island, taking what the rest of the world has to offer, just doing whatever they please, giving nothing in return. That is selfish and immature.
Given the foregoing, I must take issue with Prof. Krugman's characterization of Musk as "self-made." The term "self-made" to me is like the proverbial fingernails on the chalkboard. No one is self-made, because we all require the surrounding society to succeed. Could Musk have become a trillionaire from EV and spaceship businesses in, say, Sudan? Why did he move to the U.S. instead of Sudan or even remain in South Africa?
As Prof. Krugman can attest, becoming an expert in any field requires years of hard work and study, with lots of critical thinking and analysis. The tech bros don't want to put in the effort, but want the respect that experts rightfully receive. Their answer is to denigrate and disparage the experts, what I call "onedownmanship." It is reprehensibe and un-American.
It's more a matter of recognizing that no one person can comprehend it all. Everybody has their own area of expertise and should recognize what they don't know. It's Ricardo's concept of comparative advantage. I like to express it this way: "Do what you do best, and leave it for others to do the rest."
If you really want to know how they envision this working, pick up a copy of "Oath of Fealty", by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
Musk's Boring Company has begun a tunneling project in Nashville, so not entirely true that the Tech Bros disdain physical projects. In usual Musk (and Trump) fashion he bypassed the approval process for a project of this sort and magnitude. Fits with the complaint commonly advanced these days that nothing physical can get done because of over-regulation. However, in the list of projects that we really need, where does the Boring Company fit? Way down the list, I'd say. Global warming, on the other hand, is near the top of the list and the Tech Bros are in the process of making it worse with their giant data centers, even if they utilize nuclear power which itself is not clean energy. Making social media (and AI) safer should be at the top of the list but obviously isn't or they'd have fixed it. Another physical project is going to Mars, way down most people's list I'd wager, yet Musk is fixated on it, I suppose because of the historical place in history it would deliver to him. He and Trump share that characteristic.
Tunneling tech would be an important ability if one plans to live on a planet with no livable atmosphere. Nashville could be simply a learning experience. The sooner Elon gets to Mars the better off we will all be.
As far as I'm concerned, he doesn't need to even make it to Mars. If he just gets ejected out into space, that's fine with me.
He'll probably send other people and stay here. Like Horace Greeley, who said "Go west, young man ...." while he stayed on the East coast.
I wouldn't put it past him.
Well, his larger boosters have a poor success rate. There's a good chance he'll nova on takeoff.
That would be perfectly acceptable.
As long as he stays there and doesn't come back!
Musk, the Moleman of Mars.
Tunneling tech would be good for high speed rail on the west coast.
I would like to see Musk personally move to Mars.
I've read that global warming has already made large nuclear power plants unfeasible in many areas by making the water warm enough that it can't be used for cooling. There is, however, a push for development of small reactors (I think Westinghouse is a player there).
Wasn't he originally promising a pathway from SF to LA? It was originally meant to be means of transportation that would free up topical real estate.
Thank you for this, Paul Krugman and Jacob Silverman. As a mental health therapist (retired), I see the delusional grandiosity shared by these wealthy tech bros, and am gobsmacked. In my profession, we would say they have a split intelligence: high technical abstract abilities, but extremely low emotional intelligence. Another was of saying, I guess, that they are emotionally disabled.
One thing that crosses my mind is brain-hemisphere interaction. According to what I've read about that, the left hemisphere tends to specialise in choosing specific targets for action, while the right hemisphere tends to specialise in scanning the whole field of possibilities. Using both capacities is important in knowing what's going on. Getting 'stuck' in pouncing on the target without making a survey of what's actually forming and taking place, would support things like assuming it's possible to just go to Mars and live there, without knowing much about how life works right here on this planet.
Retired climate scientist here. And, noting PK’s pedigree, I’ve known and worked with four Nobel laureates, all in Physics: Eric Cornell, Carl Weiman, David Wineland, and now, John Martinis. What they all have in common is a certain measure of humility. Eric and David, whom I knew best, are as gracious and unassuming as anyone you’d ever meet. In fact, you’d never know who they were, or what they’ve accomplished, if you met them on the street or at a casual social gathering. That is class.
The difference is stark comparing these “rock stars of science” versus the tech bros like Musk, Thiel, Bezos, Andreeson, etc. The former earned their honors the hard way, through many long years of assiduous and dedicated scientific research. The Tech Bros, though, came into fame and fortune quickly, and much of it through sheer luck (a discussion for a later time). But, suffice it to say, it was not by playing the long game of serious scientific inquiry or peer-reviewed scholarship. Therein lies the difference.
There’s a business principle known as, “The Potent Director Fallacy,” which can be summarized succinctly with, “People in high places have no special knowledge or skill around any social or business system solely by virtue of their status.”
Q.E.D.
Thank you, luck indeed! They were all reliant - be it innovation around hardware, software or data on the existence of the underlying communications network complements of Bell Labs (and its post TA96 incarnations) which is where the real genius existed.
NYT published an article about Aaron Greenspan (former Fed Reserve chairman Alan has no children, so don't know if they are related) who did some research into how Musk was able to manipulate himself into his lucky fortune. Greenspan is condescended as a loser ruminating over his sour grapes by many, but many savvy business types do seem to have that particular skill set.
Yep, yep, yep...
A very enlightening conversation. But one thought kept popping into my head as I was reading the transcript. This seems like an appropriate time to use Occam's Razor and apply Cipolla's 5 universal laws of human stupidity to understand and explain: What the fuck is the matter with these people?? https://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/
"Love of money is the root of all evil."
😂😂😂
Paul, your final throwaway line warrants a post, or even an entire book. What kind of world did you expect to be living in at this point in time?
Enlighting and frightening. I work hard to understand the world that parrts of it are so opaque to me. Thank you for your help with this. Even if all this is happening, there are more of us then there are of them. Courage.
True. But it seems to me one of their goals is to drastically reduce our numbers.
Recall that just because someone is successful in one thing it doesn't mean they are successful in all. So these guys made some technology; it doesn't mean they know jack about people or society or democracy or anything else. They have money, but they are bored. And they have money so no one who makes their money off them tells them they are full of it. And they have money, and, surprise, they found out it didn't make them happy. And but for Citizens United, their money wouldn't matter to the rest of us. But there are millions of us and just a handful of them. And when this is over, with Reconstruction 2.0 the influence of money is going to be ripped out of the political system.
Fabulous interview. The fact that this country appears to be led by a group of psychologically stunted man-children who are terrified of dying is terrifying but my favorite line that I'll hold on to is Paul Krugman saying that he's probably happier than all of them. I feel the same way.