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Hi everybody, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. It's time to make another video, and this one is the balancing video.
Many of you know that I have been praising a lot of the things that Elon does and absolutely admire SpaceX. For example, when I saw that facility, it’s one of the most incredible facilities I’ve ever seen—probably the most incredible manufacturing company I’ve ever seen. I’ve also praised his work in Neuralink, among many other things. But in the interest of fairness, I do want to present the other side.
I saw a video the other day that I think really epitomizes the nature of one of the most complex people around. This one is from Charisma on Command; they have a nice little YouTube channel. I encourage people to watch it because there are really two Elons. One of the Elons is the brilliant inventor who does all these amazing things, allowing people with brain damage or spinal damage to walk again, think to text, take us to Mars, and build battery-powered cars. That’s the Musk whose politics and personality many people admire deeply.
Then there’s another Elon Musk, the one who pretends to be one of the best gamers in the world, pays people to play video games for him, and exhibits bizarre neurotic behavior. He calls a person on Twitter a pedophile who was just involved with the cave and the Thai kids and wants to be the main character of everything. He doesn’t handle criticism well. I can empathize and relate to that Elon Musk because when you’re a public figure under constant attack from every angle, you develop neuroses. Toxic shame can turn into malignant narcissism.
He’s at a turning point in his life right now. He’s worth over $400 billion, one of the most powerful capitalists in the world, and has this vast empire. The challenge is that if you don’t have checks and balances, if you don’t have people in your inner circle who can help regulate and moderate your behavior, you could start indulging in a fantasy version of yourself. You can skew any criticism. Every billionaire runs into this problem; you start seeing more and more sycophants and get less and less honest opinions. You have to go out of your way to prevent that from occurring. It’s a natural order of things—the bigger you get, the easier it is for these things to weasel their way in. If you’re very powerful, you can use this to lash out and cause a lot of harm.
When you start doing those things, people begin to focus on the perverse behavior instead of the accomplishments and intent. I’ve had this issue myself. There are many things I wish I could have done over, and I’m constantly having to moderate myself. Sometimes I go too far on one side and have to pull back a little bit. For example, I was getting a little caught up in the whole Trump tariff thing. It was like a negotiation tactic, and we were having fun with it. Then someone reached out to me, a Canadian, and said, “Hey, that’s offensive. Cut it out.” I thought about it and realized he was right; it was offensive to people. So I apologized and went to Twitter.
When you start leaning toward malignant narcissism, you double down on everything and can never back off. In some cases, you have to double down, like when you think someone is dishonest or something criminal is happening. You take a stand and say, “I believe this, and I’m sorry you feel differently, but I see a problem here.” However, in other cases, if there’s a legitimate difference of opinion, both sides are valid. Why would you double down and attack people? It doesn’t make sense. When you reach malignant narcissism, the only opinion that matters is your own, and any other opinion is wrong.
That’s why people who have Elon derangement syndrome, along with Trump derangement syndrome, see these types of things. Unfortunately, they focus so much on those things that they can’t see a nuanced picture. A person in power over anything substantial is going to make decisions you like and support things you like, as well as decisions that you despise and think are terrible. For example, many on the left absolutely loathed George Bush when he was president. If you took his name out of it and explained the purpose of PEPFAR to them, they’d say it was a universally good program that saved millions of lives throughout Africa. But when you put his name into it, it must be bad. It’s not about the program; it’s about the name.
The same goes for Obama. There were dozens of decisions made during the Obama administration that were universally regarded as good ideas among the many bad ideas. If you put his name into it, they must all be bad. It’s a derangement syndrome we develop; it’s a modern method to delegitimize ideas and people and to try to take power from one table to another. We get caught up in it and lose our humanity. The reality is that all human beings are deeply nuanced people. They have a shadow side, as Jung likes to say, and they have a light side. Every person is capable of evil, and every person is capable of good. Even the most despicable, harmful, terrible people in the world can do a good thing every now and then.
Politics is about collapsing nuance into boxes. Either you’re in box A, B, C, or D—team sports. Once you’ve picked a box, you live in that box forever. Here’s a great example of box collapsing: being keenly aware that sometimes you exhibit behaviors and having an honest conversation about it. This person right here is putting me in a box; that’s what he’s doing. He’s proving my point about where we’re at and how we talk about these things.
The key to getting out of this is to remember something that Henry Kissinger said about Nixon: “Could you imagine how great that man could have been if people actually just loved him?” Nixon was a victim of being in the crosshairs of so much hate for so long that he became paranoid and bitter, which ended up being his undoing. I see a lot of that in Musk. There’s a greatness there to motivate people to achieve greatness and coordinate at a scale we’ve never seen before in humanity. Getting people to work exceedingly long hours toward a focused goal is a skill set unto itself, and that is one of the most valuable skills in human history. Those are the people who build rockets, lead armies, lead nations, and actually get things done.
But just because you have that skill doesn’t excuse bad behavior. There’s been all kinds of bad behavior throughout Musk’s life and some of it throughout my own life. I wanted to make a video on the other side of it and say to those who don’t like Musk: I hear you, I really do. Don’t think for a moment that I’m beholden or captured. Just because Musk does something I agree with and think is great doesn’t mean I look at everything through that lens. I evaluate everything on a case-by-case basis. The very first thing I ask whenever I see an event occur is, “Why did they make that decision?” I highly encourage you to make that same thought process a part of your own thinking.
You have to take a step back and ask, “Why is that person saying that?” Pull out a white piece of paper and write it down. Some brainstorming thoughts: Are they saying it because they believe it? Are they saying it because they’ve been paid to say it? Are they saying it because they think it will benefit them in some way? Are they saying it because they want you to like them? Do they want you to think you’re on their side? Is it sycophantism? Every time you hear something, think of it this way. Often, when you take a minute or two to dissect that statement and really think it through, you start getting to the root cause of things. You’ll find that some of the most polished, confident people in society are not actually that competent and don’t believe the things they say. They’ve just become really good at rhetoric, relating, and shadowing—all of these skill sets that exist to build relationships with people. But they couldn’t care less if they were selling potato chips or computer chips, as long as they’re selling chips.
Dissection is super important. Once you’ve gotten to that point, if you’re viscerally opposed to what they’re saying, ask yourself: Are you viscerally opposed because you’re intimately connected to that thing? If you’re not, why do you feel so strongly about what that person is saying? Why do you feel that way in your heart? You’ll probably find that you’re a victim of propaganda. The sole purpose of propaganda is to persuade people to hate or love things they have no familiarity with. The vast majority of Americans didn’t think too much about tariffs until recently. Now, because we have boxes and teams, people have to pick a box. Those who cared about these things were libertarians, free traders, or protectionists. They had very academic arguments, but for the most part, you wouldn’t have had an opinion about it. Now you have to.
Propaganda comes in and convinces people to think one way or the other. The vast majority of people didn’t think too much about government transparency until now, and you have to pick a side. How often does that come up? You’re driving your car, and do you think to yourself, “Boy, the $76 billion that USAID is distributing is too much, or do we need to add more?” If you work for the agency, maybe you’re thinking about that stuff. But honestly, just look at yourself in the mirror. Did you really wake up and have that conversation until we started talking about it? That’s propaganda; it makes you care about something you didn’t care about and inserts an opinion into your brain. It’s like the NPC microchip, where they take one out and put another one in, and that becomes the current thing. Then you’re supposed to think inside the parameters of that system.
So, why are they saying it? How do I feel about it? On the “how do I feel about it” side, do I know a lot about it? Is this my domain? Is this my area? For example, my brother is a doctor. If somebody says something medical, he has an opinion about it because he’s a physician. If he feels strongly one way or the other, it’s usually because there’s something in his lived experience or knowledge base that informs his opinion. Now, if someone comes up and says, “I believe that dark matter is doing this in the universe,” my brother probably doesn’t have a very strong opinion about that because he’s not a physicist. It’s not his area; it’s not his domain. The same goes for me. I’m not a physicist; I couldn’t care less what dark matter is doing. Maybe I’ll care one day when I’m tokenizing it, but at the moment, I don’t.
Now, what if your opinion of dark matter has a lot to do with a space program that financially benefits Elon Musk? Suddenly, every single American is going to have a very strong opinion about dark matter. Go figure. They’re going to be experts on this, and they’ll wake up every day with a lot to say. It’s propaganda at the end of the day. So, why do you feel the way you feel? How do you feel about it? Check yourself. Be intellectually honest. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do I know about this issue? Don’t Dunning-Kruger it. If you want to really check yourself, go to ChatGPT and ask it to write a quiz for a basic understanding of that topic—10 questions. Take the quiz and see how well you do. If you score less than 50%, what right do you have to have a strong opinion about that if you don’t even have a basic understanding of how that works? You’re susceptible to propaganda. If you don’t have that basic understanding, you have no immune system to protect you from someone imprinting that information upon you. It’s just that simple.
Also, the third thing is: where can you find compassion and empathy for a person? You can do the rule of two. Look at a person, hear it fast, and ask how you feel about it. What are they actually trying to say? Then take a step back, spend five minutes, and try to see something positive about that person. Try to understand where that person is coming from. Develop some form of empathy or sympathy, then evaluate the “why.” What are they saying? Why are they trying to do that? See if your opinion on it changes. If, after empathy, your opinion changes, it’s probably not the message; it’s probably the messenger. It’s just that simple.
I think it’s worthwhile to talk about this because we don’t discuss it enough in society. It’s taboo—mental health is taboo, and our own conduct is taboo. It’s difficult to be a truth-teller because if you tell people things they don’t want to hear, they don’t like you. You’re standing up for things, and it’s uncomfortable at times. But it’s very necessary because we’re making foundational decisions about the social contract of our nation and ultimately how people treat each other, wherever they live. We’re looking for leaders, and what we find is that a pattern exists where someone will appear, and we start getting really excited about them, then we tear them down.
Sam Harris appears, and we think, “Wow, finally a rational guy who can give me some wisdom of mysticism without the religious import.” Then he gets Trump derangement syndrome, and suddenly, we can’t listen to him anymore. Jordan Peterson comes along, and we think, “Wow, this union stuff is really interesting.” But then he has that lobster thing, and suddenly, we have to hate Jordan; he’s a terrible guy. Joe Rogan comes along, and we think, “Finally, somebody I can have a conversation with.” Then Lex Fridman appears, and suddenly, they’re just darlings of the alt-right, propaganda machines, horrible human beings.
You see the pattern. Pick one person of prominence from the last 25 years who has provided either a channel for or the source of wisdom for how to get us out of this and how to live our lives, and try to find that person unblemished. There’s not a single one. We build them up, then tear them down. Musk is no different. There are no great answers or wisdom coming from Musk; that’s not his role. His role is as a change agent. He comes together and pushes people to do their best work. I’ve seen that personally. When I walked into SpaceX, they build a rocket every two days. I don’t care who you are; you didn’t do that. No one has done that. It’s the first time in human history that exists.
People say, “Well, he had nothing to do with it.” Let me be very clear: if he hadn’t been born or had died in a car accident in 1995, that would not exist. We know that because other people of his stature, like Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, tried to do what he did, and they didn’t succeed. It’s not commoditized. People say, “Oh, he didn’t found Tesla,” and that’s absolutely true; he came in during the early days. But look at the thousand other battery-powered car companies. What was the X factor? What was the difference? There’s something in his skill set to hire and inspire people to do great work. If you disagree with that statement, you have to take a step back and ask: Are you disagreeing with that statement based on objective, fact-based reality, or do you disagree because you personally dislike the man doing the work?
I have severe grievances with Bill Gates. I think some of the things he’s doing are foundationally unethical. For example, when he subsidized research to genetically engineer mosquitoes to vaccinate people—that’s not a conspiracy theory; it’s in Nature magazine. That violates the entire doctrine of medical ethics and informed consent. You cannot give informed consent to being bitten by a mosquito. You can’t; it happens. That’s the worst invention ever, and he funded the research for that. I think that’s so bad, but I do acknowledge Microsoft exists. It’s one of the greatest companies ever built; it’s worth trillions of dollars and has influenced everybody’s lives. This video is being shot on a computer running Microsoft Windows, and he’s one of the greatest businessmen of his generation. What he was able to accomplish from 1976 to 1999 has never been achieved in the software industry and probably will never be achieved again. That was largely due to his leadership and drive.
Both those things can be true at the same time: an admiration for how extraordinary a person was in navigating markets and winning, but at the same time, a personal distaste for their conduct and activity. I can hold both those thoughts in my mind at the same time, and the same can be true for Elon Musk. He could be doing great things but also be susceptible to sycophantism and malignant narcissism. We’re seeing that more and more because he’s getting rid of people in his inner circle who hold him accountable and is embracing a public image.
As a public figure myself—not at that scale, but certainly one with a million Twitter followers—I get recognized on a daily basis. I’ve had people run into me at the World of Concrete and take pictures with me. No matter where I go at this point in my life, people recognize me. I’ve even been recognized by a camel herder in Mongolia. It’s very easy to start believing the positive and negative things people say about you. People build me up and say I’m super smart and capable, and it’s easy to embrace all of that. On the other hand, it’s easy to start believing the negative things people say about you: “You’re fat, you’re balding, you’re stupid, you’re a dropout.” It gets repeated again and again, and it does have an effect on you. You wake up, look at yourself in the mirror, and think, “Yeah, I am kind of overweight.” You don’t think it’s going to affect you, but it does. It guides your behavior in some healthy ways, like thinking, “Maybe I should go to the gym,” and in some unhealthy ways. It can manifest itself and make you want to go to the other side because if all the negativity is there, it hurts you deep in your soul. Your comfort is to embrace a safety that can come from a fake version of yourself.
I see that in Elon Musk. He had a difficult childhood; his father is a terrible person. If you look at the statements he makes and the associations he had, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to grow up in South Africa during apartheid and go through that whole transition amidst all the chaos. Also, being autistic and not having appropriate social skills in such a harsh environment—imagine what his
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