Elon the Bullshitter: Explaining the Unexplainable

Elon Musk is a bit of an enigma. He’s built an empire while proving haters wrong at every corner, but also clearly is sort of an idiot. How can we explain this apparent contradiction?

The Empire

Tesla is a monster. They’ve brought electric cars further than anyone could expect. They continue to push the boundaries of what is possible with electric vehicles, and their cars just keep getting better and better. Tesla is a company that is truly changing the world, and they are doing it with cutting-edge technology and amazing cars.

SpaceX started with the goal of colonizing Mars in 2002 by making space travel more affordable. 20 years later, it’s worth over $100B. SpaceX has made significant progress towards its goal of colonizing Mars. In 2012, it became the first private company to send a spacecraft to orbit and back. 5 years later, it sent another spacecraft to Mars, becoming the first private company to land on the red planet.

Elon has a number of other bets as well, including Neuralink and the Boring Company. These bets seem to be paying off. Neuralink has made significant progress in developing brain-computer interfaces, and the Boring Company has signed a number of contracts to build tunnels for high-speed transportation.

The Idiot

I’ll keep this one short. Elon tried to buy Twitter, then the market dropped and he tried to get out of an iron clad deal. He spent millions of dollars to end up in the exact same spot he started. Then he rolled out a new verification process, which was a colossal mess. Then, he laid off half of Twitter employees, next called everyone back from work from home… only to watch even more people quit. It’s clear these things aren’t well thought out. It’s clear there is no plan.

I could go on all day around this… He’s had numerous examples of this kind of errors (his foray into Bitcoin, pedo guy tweet, etc…) Like it or not, Elon is a bullshitter.

Explaining the Unexplainable

How do we bridge these two ideas that are seemingly contradictory? In situations like these, our normal models of reality can’t explain the reality we are seeing.

Elon is a bullshitter. Elon delivers results. Elon is a bullshitter who delivers results. You think the two are mutually exclusive, but that is just because we haven’t seen anyone like Elon before.

I wish I came up with this idea, but I know I read it somewhere. Every day this mental model has proved more and more true. Elon the bullshitter… who delivers results. Don’t fall for the bullshit, don’t doubt the results.