I had to think really hard on this odd comment because I've always felt Elon had a relatively modestly-sized ego and was very humble even, preferring to give credit to his talented engineers and hard-working team than bask in the glory of his achievements.
Can you provide some evidence of Elon Musk's outsized ego? What are you basing this on? Facts or just a personal judgment based on nothing more than your own human biases and prejudices without any evidence? I'm very curious about this.
"Ego" is a three word letter that I used because English is not my first language (as you can see by the amount of errors I make in every post) and because I didn't have much time to write. I didn't like it very much but I thought it served its purpose in that sentence. But I see now it was a mistake.
It's an imperfect word: Elon's mind and personality is complex, and I formed my opinion reading the biography, the WaitButWhy articles series, and pretty much every interview, earnings call, video on Youtube from 2016 till now.
I've spent thousands of hours of my time reading about Elon, here and elsewhere.
I get the humbleness you see, and I see it too: nerdy, stuttering Elon is my favorite Elon, when he's calm you can see his mind working and I always learn a lot from what he says, every time. In this regard, his ego is very small compared to other famous, rich people. I like this a lot about him.
But Elon is a fearless guy: being so fearless is actually the most incredible feature that Elon has, and I think is underappreciated, in both his pros and cons.
He's fearless in his ambitions, if they are grounded in data, science and reality.
He's fearless in being able to learn everything, and he has an insane amount of awareness in his means, in his resources, in his hardworking, in the possibility of reaching a solution to a problem.
When he thinks he's right, he's f**king unstoppable.
He, most of the time, has a good method to form his opinions: the first principle thinking, looking at the data, disregarding authority-for-the-sake-of-authority, etc.
If you listen to people that worked closely with him, they always acknowledge how hard it is
to always "think by first principles", and also how little he thinks about your opinions, if they are not your area of expertise and you're not really thinking "first".
From the outside, this fearlessness and disregard for others' opinion can be
imperfectly seen as ego, as arrogance.
Usually, his "mind software" is very, very good.
My worry is that, given his humanity, his method to form his opinion is not always perfect.
Too much praise clouds the mind, feeds incorrect data (ie. my example before), and thus a wrong opinion by Elon is much more dangerous than anybody else.
And Elon has emotions, like anyone else. When he says that running a business like he does is "staring in to the abyss, eating glass", I ponder his words. Elon passed through some dark times personally (ie when he didn't have a partner and Tesla was in dire times) and as a businessman.
And power is a tangible thing. If you have power, it changes and affects the people around you, even if you don't want it.
Powerful people always need to make sure not to be surrounded by yesmen.
If you sum his emotional "vunerability" and his power and fame status,
this is exactly why he needs to be surrounded by people who he can trust, that care for him and guide him and tell him when he's wrong. His family (ie Kimbal) seems to be good at this.
A bunch of young youtubers seeking Elon's attention are not really a good twitter company for him, IMHO. It's dangerous especially because Twitter is a very "reactive" medium, weaponized for quick immediate response and not reasoning.
I always felt that when Elon has time and space to express his opinions, the better it is.
If Elon wrote long FB posts, we'd have much less drama ;-)
I hope this is now more clear, i think I've put all my reasoning for my disagreement whith his recent tweet and my worry for the cheerleading and vocal fanbase. Sorry for the rant.
