You get 5 gold stars for trying to glean some useful leadership advice from Elon and DOGE. And your "motte and bailey fallacy" was insightful, I even shared what you wrote with my wife. But is this antibody theory like saying "Anne Frank was a great writer, so we need more Nazi's" to create the horrific conditions that will result in great writers? I don't think you're suggesting that. The value of a diamond is in the diamond, not the fire and pressure surrounding it.
For me it is easier to understand Elon's volition from his privileged apartheid‐era schooling at the white-male only Pretoria Boys High School, and his grandfather's "technocracy" dogma, with dehumanizing (racist and misogynistic) values that were cloaked for many years. His main validation for ideas is "First Principles thinking", but he often commits to Flawed Principles by assuming he is an expert at all things. Now he feels emboldened with this "Liberterrorism" inspired by Curtis Yarvin and directed by Russ Vought, and clearly has targeted the federal departments that he felt were blocking him. But I believe Trust is Currency, and Elon is losing trust. Already we have seen dramatic declines in the sales of Teslas worldwide. His tech bros on X are insulating him from what real people think, but shareholders will sue him (again), while cities, states, and countries will cancel contracts for Starlink, Tesla Energy, etc. Competitors will take the lead. Americans did not vote for an oligarchy, and we should not hold Elon up as a model for future entrepreneurs. Steve Jobs was "mercurial", but he was not dehumanizing like Musk. I can't imagine Elon saying anything that respects human dignity like this: "There's lots of ways to be as a person, and one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there." - Steve Jobs
I think you want "diverse viewpoints" here, so there's mine. :)
That's 5 more gold stars than I had this morning! What a treat.
Seriously though I appreciate your comment. In writing this article I tried to simultaneously avoid both the "here's 7 leadership lessons from Elon Musk" LinkedIn slop approach, and the alternative "seriously guys he's a Nazi" angle too (example of what I tried to avoid: https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/02/22/a-few-simple-points/index.html) because I think both of them are more than adequately represented in the discourse right now. So if you're wondering why I didn't attempt a more emphatic takedown, that's the reason. That's not me saying I agree with every single point you made in your comment, but let's just say I think you're more right than you're wrong.
Also, the topic that interests me here is based on information I've been hearing from friends at Elon's companies (and published public accounts) over the past decade or so; and his "management style" really isn't anything new, he's probably been running his companies like this since PayPal. The things you're talking about, which seem to be more of a 2022-present phenomena, are obviously related but a little different and a lot more extreme. I think a lot of the more recent activities have to do with the predictably negative psychological consequences of being the main character of an entire Internet social platform, compounded with mostly-untreated bipolar disorder (see https://gwern.net/note/elon-musk).
I accept your critique that the article's tone is a bit sanguine if I were to be evaluating, say, Musk's political activities from July 13 2024 to present. You'll have to take me at my word that I've had a draft of this post in the back of my mind since maybe 2016.
Haha... makes sense, and it's hard to avoid the political aspect. Musk acts like an addict, not just with ketamine binges, but with social media adrenaline and dopamine "hits". He certainly could be self-medicating his "swings".
"Musk acts like an addict." In that way, this antibody theory is a bit like high-functioning co-dependent family systems. This is to some extent the takeaway from the famous pop-psychology book Drama of the Gifted Child. So, what looks like a resiliency response, is actually a "high-functioning" forfeiture of boundaries. In a tech environment with gifted and highly skilled technical workers, so long as the end-goals give primacy to tangible technology (and not necessarily primacy to the emotions of the chaotic leader), this forfeiture can be paradoxically functional at an organizational level. Especially with product-based deliverables. Like the gifted child with an addict parent, bringing home first place at the Science fair. The child develops a sense of control over an erratic environment via their technical mastery. But in environments where the end-goals are less tangible or program-based, where leadership cannot be self-indulgent and frequently needs to take on the unpleasant adult tasks of preventing bad things from happening or fixing bad things through additive organization-building, this type of chaotic leadership will trigger organizational decay. There is a very real argument that progressive leadership has similarly triggered organizational decay. That while Musk inspires a gifted child technical competence drama via chaos, progressive leadership inspires a gifted child emotional competence drama via bids for (and threats against) love. At a Freudian level, both leadership styles are anti-Paternal and a denial of the Superego. Musk (or even Trump) are anti-Paternal via an archetype of Chaos Uncle whereas modern progressivism is anti-Paternal via an archetype of the Primordial Mother. But either way, many of us find ourselves with organizational leadership that triggers a dramaturgy of giftedness (of one form or another) rather than reality-based collaboration that welcomes humility and continuous adaptation to the needs of the environment. IME, having worked in healthcare at both the VA and in a giant private system, non-partisan government work does not function at all via charismatic leadership of a singular Chaos Uncle or Primordial Mother. Rather, it is an amorphous matrix of democratically governed Paternal clans (in style, lots of these Paternal clan leaders are women), each with a specific public service mission but also with a shared mission. There are certainly elements of dysfunction, but usually that is due to pockets of Chaos Uncle or Primordial Mother, leading to a clan or sub-clan developing a mission to itself rather than the public service. Or there are individuals within the clan that do not tolerate Paternal dynamics, and they become obstacles or dead weight. Additionally, the changing environment will initially trigger squabbling between the clans, but eventually the public service mission will prevail, and the clans will identity new responsibilities in order to adapt. All this to say, I don't know if these Paternal clans can hold the barricade against this level of chaos in and diversion from the public service mission. I sure hope they can.
"If for nothing else, I appreciate that Elon is showing us new and interesting ways to assemble and motivate organizations. And if DOGE is a total disaster, at least we’ll have learned something new there too."
Terrible take. DOGE is blowing up the entire federal bureaucracy, the federal workforce will probably never be the same for the rest of our lives.
That's not something where you just try it for fun on a whim and then if it doesn't work out you go "oh well tee hee, at we learned something new!"
Maybe that flies with blowing up Twitter, not with the US government.
You get 5 gold stars for trying to glean some useful leadership advice from Elon and DOGE. And your "motte and bailey fallacy" was insightful, I even shared what you wrote with my wife. But is this antibody theory like saying "Anne Frank was a great writer, so we need more Nazi's" to create the horrific conditions that will result in great writers? I don't think you're suggesting that. The value of a diamond is in the diamond, not the fire and pressure surrounding it.
For me it is easier to understand Elon's volition from his privileged apartheid‐era schooling at the white-male only Pretoria Boys High School, and his grandfather's "technocracy" dogma, with dehumanizing (racist and misogynistic) values that were cloaked for many years. His main validation for ideas is "First Principles thinking", but he often commits to Flawed Principles by assuming he is an expert at all things. Now he feels emboldened with this "Liberterrorism" inspired by Curtis Yarvin and directed by Russ Vought, and clearly has targeted the federal departments that he felt were blocking him. But I believe Trust is Currency, and Elon is losing trust. Already we have seen dramatic declines in the sales of Teslas worldwide. His tech bros on X are insulating him from what real people think, but shareholders will sue him (again), while cities, states, and countries will cancel contracts for Starlink, Tesla Energy, etc. Competitors will take the lead. Americans did not vote for an oligarchy, and we should not hold Elon up as a model for future entrepreneurs. Steve Jobs was "mercurial", but he was not dehumanizing like Musk. I can't imagine Elon saying anything that respects human dignity like this: "There's lots of ways to be as a person, and one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there." - Steve Jobs
I think you want "diverse viewpoints" here, so there's mine. :)
That's 5 more gold stars than I had this morning! What a treat.
Seriously though I appreciate your comment. In writing this article I tried to simultaneously avoid both the "here's 7 leadership lessons from Elon Musk" LinkedIn slop approach, and the alternative "seriously guys he's a Nazi" angle too (example of what I tried to avoid: https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/02/22/a-few-simple-points/index.html) because I think both of them are more than adequately represented in the discourse right now. So if you're wondering why I didn't attempt a more emphatic takedown, that's the reason. That's not me saying I agree with every single point you made in your comment, but let's just say I think you're more right than you're wrong.
Also, the topic that interests me here is based on information I've been hearing from friends at Elon's companies (and published public accounts) over the past decade or so; and his "management style" really isn't anything new, he's probably been running his companies like this since PayPal. The things you're talking about, which seem to be more of a 2022-present phenomena, are obviously related but a little different and a lot more extreme. I think a lot of the more recent activities have to do with the predictably negative psychological consequences of being the main character of an entire Internet social platform, compounded with mostly-untreated bipolar disorder (see https://gwern.net/note/elon-musk).
I accept your critique that the article's tone is a bit sanguine if I were to be evaluating, say, Musk's political activities from July 13 2024 to present. You'll have to take me at my word that I've had a draft of this post in the back of my mind since maybe 2016.
Haha... makes sense, and it's hard to avoid the political aspect. Musk acts like an addict, not just with ketamine binges, but with social media adrenaline and dopamine "hits". He certainly could be self-medicating his "swings".
"Musk acts like an addict." In that way, this antibody theory is a bit like high-functioning co-dependent family systems. This is to some extent the takeaway from the famous pop-psychology book Drama of the Gifted Child. So, what looks like a resiliency response, is actually a "high-functioning" forfeiture of boundaries. In a tech environment with gifted and highly skilled technical workers, so long as the end-goals give primacy to tangible technology (and not necessarily primacy to the emotions of the chaotic leader), this forfeiture can be paradoxically functional at an organizational level. Especially with product-based deliverables. Like the gifted child with an addict parent, bringing home first place at the Science fair. The child develops a sense of control over an erratic environment via their technical mastery. But in environments where the end-goals are less tangible or program-based, where leadership cannot be self-indulgent and frequently needs to take on the unpleasant adult tasks of preventing bad things from happening or fixing bad things through additive organization-building, this type of chaotic leadership will trigger organizational decay. There is a very real argument that progressive leadership has similarly triggered organizational decay. That while Musk inspires a gifted child technical competence drama via chaos, progressive leadership inspires a gifted child emotional competence drama via bids for (and threats against) love. At a Freudian level, both leadership styles are anti-Paternal and a denial of the Superego. Musk (or even Trump) are anti-Paternal via an archetype of Chaos Uncle whereas modern progressivism is anti-Paternal via an archetype of the Primordial Mother. But either way, many of us find ourselves with organizational leadership that triggers a dramaturgy of giftedness (of one form or another) rather than reality-based collaboration that welcomes humility and continuous adaptation to the needs of the environment. IME, having worked in healthcare at both the VA and in a giant private system, non-partisan government work does not function at all via charismatic leadership of a singular Chaos Uncle or Primordial Mother. Rather, it is an amorphous matrix of democratically governed Paternal clans (in style, lots of these Paternal clan leaders are women), each with a specific public service mission but also with a shared mission. There are certainly elements of dysfunction, but usually that is due to pockets of Chaos Uncle or Primordial Mother, leading to a clan or sub-clan developing a mission to itself rather than the public service. Or there are individuals within the clan that do not tolerate Paternal dynamics, and they become obstacles or dead weight. Additionally, the changing environment will initially trigger squabbling between the clans, but eventually the public service mission will prevail, and the clans will identity new responsibilities in order to adapt. All this to say, I don't know if these Paternal clans can hold the barricade against this level of chaos in and diversion from the public service mission. I sure hope they can.
"If for nothing else, I appreciate that Elon is showing us new and interesting ways to assemble and motivate organizations. And if DOGE is a total disaster, at least we’ll have learned something new there too."
Terrible take. DOGE is blowing up the entire federal bureaucracy, the federal workforce will probably never be the same for the rest of our lives.
That's not something where you just try it for fun on a whim and then if it doesn't work out you go "oh well tee hee, at we learned something new!"
Maybe that flies with blowing up Twitter, not with the US government.