Great Leaders Simplify Things — But Sometimes Incorrectly, And Often So In Elon Musk’s Case – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

Like many, I continue to be a bit baffled that someone who has led a couple of companies to great things has also proven to be extremely simple minded and gullible on other matters. In one field, it’s all about “first principles” and digging down into the heart of matters in order to solve problems and innovate, and in another field, it’s all about quick, poorly thought out assumptions and latching onto misinformation. What?

MAJOR BREAKING NEWS: CBS News Analysis Reveals That the Clear Majority of Tweets By Elon Musk About the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Are Either Misinformation or Disinformation

Yes, the *clear majority*. https://t.co/56ATBk8brL

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) October 23, 2024

I know some people think Elon Musk is an idiot on everything and just got lucky in business, or think he’s just a good showman for tech bros. I’m not really in that camp, and am not assuming that for this article.

However, there have long been signs that he struggles to understand some social matters and jumps to conclusions and big statements very quickly on political matters. (Remember when he supported Ye for president?)

The issue lately is that Musk has been spreading tons of misinformation and disinformation. Showing either lack of recent political history or no care for it, for example, he’s been spreading claims about Dominion voting systems that led to Dominion claiming billions of dollars of damages against others, and winning their lawsuits. Maybe Musk wants to be next to pay Dominion a huge chunk of cash, or maybe he’s simply uninformed, or maybe he knows better and thinks he’ll get away with it. In any case, it’s another case of simplistic thinking that is leading to misinformation. Overall, “The CBS News Confirmed team fact-checked Musk’s posts on election security and found that 55% contain misleading or false statements, or amplify posts that do.” Yikes. But, honestly, I’m surprised the result wasn’t higher than 55%.

“Further analysis of these posts showed that 40 of the accounts Musk replied to or reposted were accounts researchers have identified as promoters of voter fraud claims.” In other words, Musk is in a misinformation bubble, or echo chamber, and thus has a warped view of the world on this subject and is surely lacking tons of context. He also, for sure, is simplifying the situation in his mind and jumping to incorrect conclusions based on that simplification.

It still shocks me that not more people have bothered to figure out what happened on January 6th and leading up to it. But it’s clear Musk is one of those people, and that’s been clear for a long time. I remember his tweet in response to it right after it happened — it indicated he had very little understanding of what was going on and how it came about. Incidentally, Musk at least acknowledged recently that he’s a political novice and is out of his depth. “I have never been materially active in politics before, but this time I think civilization as we know it is on the line,” Musk posted last month. “If we want to preserve freedom and a meritocracy in America, then Trump must win.” Ah, yes, from lack of involvement and truly understanding the game to thinking that someone who tried to implement a coup and stop the legal, normal, democratic transfer of power is the one we need to vote for to protect civilization and democracy. It’s nuts, and it comes from simplified assumptions that are naive and incorrect.

It’s not because Trump is a great leader that his former vice president won’t endorse him, that other former Republican vice presidents and presidential nominees are endorsing his Democratic opponent, and that his former Chief of Staff and others who worked closely with him in the White House say that he’s a fascist at his core, has praised Hitler, and is a grave threat to US democracy and society.

Incidentally, it has come out in the past day or so that Musk has been in touch with Putin off and on since 2022. That’s from the conservative Wall Street Journal and has five journalists on the byline. That explains some of the weird things that have happened since then, and also explains Musk parroting simplistic Russian government talking points on multiple occasions. One can assume Musk is just evil and pursuing greedy self interests. I think he’s just very open to flattery and quick to jump to simple conclusions on social and political matters, more often incorrectly than not.

I know it’s a simplistic answer in itself that I’ve put in the headline, and I do think there’s also much more at play, but from following Elon Musk for 12 years, I do think that some of his best genius has been simplifying concepts and working hard on simplified goals — not being distracted by too many things that could have killed Tesla’s progress — and think that part of his problem in the political arena is that he’s constantly seeking and parroting simple solutions or answers on complex issues. And I’ve seen a number of occasions where he’s claimed that complex explanations or concepts don’t make any sense. Just because he can’t understand them doesn’t mean they don’t make any sense.

To close, I want to circle back to something above and expound on it. Recall that he said “I have never been materially active in politics before.” Indeed. We all know that he has been highly engrossed in rocket ship development, electric car development, manufacturing, the battery supply chain, computer software, having 12 kids, Neuralink, and other matters. He didn’t have time to learn about what was happening politically, or he’d have to have really great consultants briefing him quickly on such matters — which he clearly didn’t. The problem is he’s jumped into a whole host of complex topics with long histories and quickly assumed that basic explanations about them from biased, echo-chamber sources are correct. The more concerning part is that he has had his misinformation corrected many times — even by his own Community Notes service — and he hasn’t changed how or where he’s collecting information in response to that. Instead of broadening and deepening his research, it seems he has narrowed it and gotten much less open minded. It’s a sad and disturbing belly flop into the mud.