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I'm not surprised by this, especially on the trait of fearlessness. Check many successful entrepreneurs, and you'll observe that they're crazy. Take Musk for e

I'm not surprised by this, especially on the trait of fearlessness. Check many successful entrepreneurs, and you'll observe that they're crazy. Take Musk for example, you really have to be fearless and delusional to think that you can build a successful electric carmaker from scratch and a company making re-usable rockets at the same time. These traits serve him positively in business, but it's no surprise to also see it manifest negatively in other areas...

rainsford 3y ago
I wonder about survivorship bias in Musk's case. Lots of fearless people with overdose levels of hubris don't lead successful car and/or rocket companies after all. You could probably make a reasonable argument that those traits helped Elon Musk specifically, but that's different than arguing they're useful traits for success in general. I agree with your point about those traits manifesting negatively for Musk himself, but I feel like that effect is going to be even more significant for entrepreneurs trying to succeed by emulating the 2023 version of Elon.
- bagacrap 3y ago
  I think the argument would be that they're necessary but not sufficient for success.
hristov 3y ago
I am not sure how Musk would qualify as a psychopath. If you look carefully, his successful ventures were actually the result of very thoughtful and careful long term planning. And this is not usually a strong suit for psychopaths. He did not build a successful electric car maker, he joined tesla well after it was founded and after it had done significant amount of development. But if you examined why tesla succeeded it was not only boldness or craziness, but careful planning many many years ahead. It is not enough to do something that seems impossible, that usually ends up in failure as the thing ends up being in fact impossible. The genius is to see how technology and public perception changes in the future as to set out in such a way that after 10-20 years of hard work the impossible will seem possible. On the other hand his failures and many embarrassments came universally from doing things on a whim. Examples are that "funding secured" tweet and the purchase of twitter. And if you look at those embarrassments they are really more the result of narcissism than psychopathy. So if I had to guess, I think Musk has developed more narcissistic traits later on due to his success, being surrounded by sycophants, mental exhaustion and perhaps drug use. But I don't think this is the cause of his success.

rainsford 3y ago

I wonder about survivorship bias in Musk's case. Lots of fearless people with overdose levels of hubris don't lead successful car and/or rocket companies after all. You could probably make a reasonable argument that those traits helped Elon Musk specifically, but that's different than arguing they're useful traits for success in general. I agree with your point about those traits manifesting negatively for Musk himself, but I feel like that effect is going to be even more significant for entrepreneurs trying to succeed by emulating the 2023 version of Elon.

bagacrap 3y ago
I think the argument would be that they're necessary but not sufficient for success.

hristov 3y ago

I am not sure how Musk would qualify as a psychopath. If you look carefully, his successful ventures were actually the result of very thoughtful and careful long term planning. And this is not usually a strong suit for psychopaths. He did not build a successful electric car maker, he joined tesla well after it was founded and after it had done significant amount of development. But if you examined why tesla succeeded it was not only boldness or craziness, but careful planning many many years ahead. It is not enough to do something that seems impossible, that usually ends up in failure as the thing ends up being in fact impossible. The genius is to see how technology and public perception changes in the future as to set out in such a way that after 10-20 years of hard work the impossible will seem possible. On the other hand his failures and many embarrassments came universally from doing things on a whim. Examples are that "funding secured" tweet and the purchase of twitter. And if you look at those embarrassments they are really more the result of narcissism than psychopathy. So if I had to guess, I think Musk has developed more narcissistic traits later on due to his success, being surrounded by sycophants, mental exhaustion and perhaps drug use. But I don't think this is the cause of his success.