What is Musk selling?

General Philosophy
1

In this short post, I’ve set out to compile what the world’s richest man—beloved by some, perhaps less so by others—is offering to his contemporaries. I personally follow him, his statements, his interviews, his progress, and his activities in general. When you bring all his projects together—adding a bit of synthesis, analysis, and speculation—a fairly coherent picture emerges.

  1. Humanity must become an interplanetary species.
    The core argument: Earth is vulnerable (to war, pandemics, or catastrophes). Our civilization could perish. Therefore, humanity must “diversify” its risks and find a new home—or rather, many new homes.
  2. Technology will eliminate scarcity and bring about abundance for everyone: “sustainable abundance.”
    The core argument: Work should no longer be a necessity. AI will boost productivity and speed; robots will take over routine human tasks; autonomous transport will make travel faster and cheaper; and advancements in energy technology will make energy inexpensive.
  3. Humans must transcend biology. Neuralink.
    The core argument: The biological limitations of the human mind must be overcome. Humans should not remain constrained by their biology; the vision involves a symbiosis with AI.
    (Incidentally, this also includes the promise of restoring the ability to interact with computers for the severely ill and those with disabilities.)
  4. Accelerating humanity’s scientific discoveries.
    The core argument: AI should help us understand the workings of the universe and answer questions that have long been considered unanswerable. AI is intended to serve as a tool for discovery. The vision involves scaling AI into space to expand consciousness throughout the universe (implying that, in this version, AI already possesses some form of “consciousness”).
  5. Growth is infinite.
    Core argument: Growth in one area does not necessitate cutbacks in another; resource scarcity can be overcome through technology, innovation, and new ideas.
  6. Information should be transmitted without intermediaries.
    Core argument: Mass media lies. Individuals are capable of disseminating information themselves (this is the stated purpose of X).
  7. Civilization (especially Western civilization) is under threat.
    Core argument: Declining birth rates are viewed as an existential risk to civilization. Therefore, civilization must reproduce itself.
  8. The future belongs to energy.
    Core argument: Money will soon become obsolete, replaced by something measured in watts or tons.

All these slogans and the arguments supporting them seem quite modern, intelligible, and familiar to almost all of us. Interestingly, yesterday, while I was listening to an interview with Musk, my wife remarked that if she didn’t know who was speaking, she would have taken him for a madman—his ideas are that unconventional.

These individual statements coalesce into a broader, technologically driven, and progressive vision of the future. It is a vision one wants to believe in—something worth living for. The problem, however, is that the human well-being supposedly destined to emerge from following this path does not necessarily follow from the premises provided: overcoming biological limitations, colonizing Mars, or achieving breakthroughs in AI offer no guarantee of true well-being. Furthermore, the very criteria for “well-being” derived from these narratives—abundance, the expansion of intelligence, acceleration, modernization, progress—are rather hollow. Neither the billionaire himself nor his team provides any evidence or reasoning to justify why these specific criteria should be considered the “truth.”

At the same time, I increasingly encounter proponents of this perspective. Many of our contemporaries readily embrace these ideas, genuinely believing that this is how things will unfold.

But, fellow forum members, doesn’t the very mechanism by which these ideas—this form of eschatology—are presented feel familiar? Each premise posits a goal, and the journey toward that goal is promised to yield a state of well-being.

While no one explicitly claims that this future is guaranteed to come to pass, it is clearly implied. If so, how does this differ from religious eschatology—or, for that matter, from any ideology that, much like an intangible desire or sentiment, shapes and directs the rational aspirations of ordinary people?

In my humble opinion, what he is selling, first and foremost, is a belief: the conviction that humanity stands at the threshold of a grand transition—from a life of limited existence to one of boundless expansion in its capabilities.

Each individual project reinforces the necessity of the others: capital must be urgently poured into energy and AI; AI is essential for the advancement of civilization; these developments will drive efficiency and accelerate progress, ultimately leading to an era of abundance through the technologically optimized use of resources—and so on. Taken together, these elements coalesce into a single, unified vision.

Yet, this future does not currently exist. Have Musk’s achievements to date truly altered our daily lives in any significant way? Have they made us any happier? As of now, we are left only with projects, imaginings, and ideas—and yet, these very things are already shaping how we live. A statement from one or two billionaires can send the stock market into a tailspin, while possessing the latest, cutting-edge technology has become almost a mandatory requirement for any market participant who wishes to be taken seriously. The future has begun to impose demands upon the present, even though it has yet to arrive.

It is also worth noting that when a billionaire speaks—as opposed to an ordinary person—his words, no matter how outlandish, are frequently perceived as a kind of revelation. His past successes have built up a reservoir of credibility that extends even to areas where his competence or the validity of his forecasts remain unproven. A mere hypothesis begins to be viewed almost as a concrete prediction, and a prediction—almost as a revelation.

After all, the more outlandish a fantasy, the more plausible it can appear—especially when it comes from the lips of the most successful person of all.

My main question today is this: humanity, by and large, has learned to recognize idolatry. We have learned to discern when a politician tries to sell us a future that does not exist. We have learned to spot lies in the media (in most cases). Moreover, we have devised tools to institutionally hinder the spread of mass hysteria.

But how does all this activity by Musk differ from what we have already experienced? Why can the very same person look upon religious preaching with disdain, yet simultaneously pin their hopes on infinite progress? What is the difference in the underlying mechanics?

And, most importantly: is teleology not one of the fundamental modes of human existence—a way in which a person organizes the present in relation to a future that does not yet exist?

2 Likes
2

Good summary, thanks. IMO, there’s nothing particularly interesting or imaginative about the points listed, and I don’t see Musk as a visionary thinker or, now, considering his antics on Twitter, even a serious person.

Rather, he’s a great marketer and stock pumper—the world’s greatest ever capitalist as he has been dubbed. He was apparently a very hard worker for most of his life, unbelievably driven and dedicated, but his primary focus in recent years has been making an ideologcial warrior of himself in the mode of Trump, only with a techy edge.

If you think through the implications of his grand plans for human beings, they come to little. There’s no real understanding of what makes life worth living. Rather, he seems to consider people to be analagous to characters in a video game who just need to keep levelling up with added superpowers to be happy, and this, while at the same time, maintaining that everything ultimately will be done by AI.

It’s the future as designed by a thirteen year old boy. It’s boring, sad, and immature as far as I can see. But maybe some of his defenders can demonstrate something more positive about his vision.

As for the religious analogue, @Benkei did a nice parody of that in one of his short stories, which kind of covered it for me.

3 Likes
3

Thank you.
To be honest, I never doubted for a moment that someone with a serious interest in philosophy—or simply someone not prone to living in a rose-colored fantasy world—would be able to perceive all of this. I used Musk here as an illustrative example—simply because he is well-known to everyone.

The core idea that drew me to this topic is the “vision of the future”—something crafted with great skill by experts in the field. The crux of the concept is that once a vision is accepted as truth by a sufficient number of people, it becomes something more than mere imagination. The future does not merely organize the present; it gains power over the present long before it actually arrives.

This is a rather broad subject. I have previously used the example of a busy city intersection—one with poor lane markings and no traffic lights or traffic officer. Cars navigate past one another with great dexterity, often just centimeters apart; traffic keeps flowing, and accidents are rare (though they do happen). It seems as if no one is directing this chaos; each driver manages their own vehicle, following some traffic rules while ignoring others.

Why, then, do the cars manage to pass each other without colliding? I’ve come to explain this phenomenon through the lens of “project-orientedness”—a vision of the future held by each individual driver. It is a goal toward which the driver is moving—a goal that takes precedence over strict adherence to the rules. The priority is to arrive on time, without incident.

The “project”—or the envisioned future—held by each subject at that intersection organizes the present. And it does so quite effectively: the intersection is clearly not designed to handle such a volume of traffic, yet the movement continues. Each person’s actions are adjusted in response to the movements of those around them.

This example clearly illustrates how a directed pursuit of a goal sustains life in the present. In fact, my hypothesis is that this very “sketch” of the future—an Entwurf, or projection, held in each of our minds—determines far more than is generally assumed.

Consider drivers, for instance: their immediate goal is to reach point B—a short-term objective. Yet, beneath the surface, each of us harbors medium- and long-term goals as well.

Where, then, do these long-term goals originate? It is currently fashionable to suggest that they are shaped by “discourse.” But what, in turn, shapes that discourse? In my view, it is driven by individuals like Elon Musk.

If you speak with a contemporary, you will find they hold a specific vision of progress: space exploration, artificial intelligence, longevity (or even immortality), and, ultimately, transhumanism. In essence, these are merely ideas—articulated by someone—that come to define the subconscious aspirations of many of us.

These ideas lack any foundational support. While philosophers may spend their entire lives striving to make even a single, definitive assertion, those who shape the discourse do not bother to justify the necessity of the worldview they are “selling”—and the price they command is high. Look at the securities or commodities markets: it is a “game of expectations.” Oil is not worth its current market price; rather, it is valued based on expectations—on what the market deems most likely to unfold in the future.

An individual presented with such a vision of the future may not know who crafted it, upon what premises it rests, or who stands to benefit from its dissemination. Yet, once exposed to it, they find it impossible to live in defiance of that vision.

This state of affairs has become particularly “glaringly obvious” today—in our world of high-speed change. And yet, just as in the time of David Hume, the future remains inherently unpredictable (we cannot even say with absolute certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow). At the same time, it turns out that what may or may not happen—the future—shapes our present lives, our decisions, and even the simplest choices—like which pair of sneakers to wear—far more than we typically realize. Perhaps out of sheer habit, we simply tend to overlook this.

When a man who “created” a reusable space rocket (even if such a thing is ultimately irrelevant to human happiness) declares that “energy is the future,” we cannot simply ignore his words.

A second idea, following from the previous line of reasoning, is that without this “project-oriented” vision of a desired or imagined future, there would be no reason for us to move forward, follow rules, respect others, or feel empathy for them. I may be veering into the realm of ethics here, but if we are to discuss “humanity,” I would challenge the notion that it arises solely from empathy or a priori categories. I would propose, instead, that the capacity for abstract thought—the ability to envision what might happen or what is to come (however naively we may do so)—is a crucial factor.

It is upon this drive—the compelling urge to project a future—that the mechanisms underlying religion, politics, and marketing are built.

I don’t believe Musk creates “things.” Rather, Musk sells a vision of the future. In the past, priests sold such visions; political agitators did (and still do) the same. A philosopher might declare that “God is dead,” yet the human drive toward an imagined future—for one’s own self—remains very much alive; it has never, for a single moment, ceased to exist.

4

I’d go along with that analysis to a degree, but my critique of Musk would be that what he sells is like all bad Sci-Fi, and that is a political vision of the present projected back into itself and packaged as the future. It does not predict anything new; rather it acts as a marketing tool for what is already here and what he wants to sell us through his companies. And it’s all based on the trivially falsifiable idea that comfort, leisure and wealth = happiness. He’s not selling the future, he’s selling the prevailing ideology, the one which continues to make him rich.

When it comes then to the ethical side of things, all you need to believe is that technocapitalism will take care of that. It will all work out for everyone, not just the likes of Musk who sit at the very top of the pyramid that we plebs built. In the end, somehow our interests will be served in a system built around an attention economy that aneasthesizes thought, hollows out culture, and makes the kind of codswallop served up by Musk and the tech bros sound like a future worth having.

1 Like
5

I suppose another way of putting that is what I want as a vision for the future is qualitative change not just quantitative extensions of what is already here. I’m not interested in further, bigger, more powerful everything. I’m interested in the potential for a society where individuation is the goal, and I see the “further, bigger, more powerful” stuff as a distraction that obscures the trend towards greater and greater disindividuation and homogenisation.

So, yes, we are always looking forward in a sense to organize the here and now, just like in your traffic example. That’s part of what it is to be human, to be constantly orientating the present according to an imagined future. But it’s the imagination part that’s key. The tech bro vision is in my view a means to keep things on the same trajectory while gesturing towards change. It’s an attempt to enslave the imagination rather than free it.

6

I must admit, you’ve given me something to think about. I’ve reframed it in a way that makes sense to me: what if the “generator of the future”—this evangelist for progress and skilled salesman of what’s to come—isn’t actually author of the very project he’s selling?

This aligns well with my own perspective: I’ve seen 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars (with their visions of space), The Terminator (with its take on AI), and even the Soviet film Moscow-Cassiopeia (featuring “robot assistants” that take over the Cassiopeia system, while humans remain in orbit).

What if the “author” of the future didn’t actually create his project at all, but simply retold the fantasies of his youth?

On one hand, this reinforces my thesis regarding “discourse”—a framework that could very well have produced the figure we’re discussing today. In reality, he’s just taking concepts already imagined by science fiction writers, rebranding them as “reality”—and, furthermore, as the inevitable future. Moreover, this approach—expanding “sideways” by simply increasing the number of kilowatts or tons—fails to address other, persistent problems. After all, the question of “happiness” isn’t determined by how many tons of gold one possesses.

There’s no sign of a qualitative solution here. I agree with you on that; it’s a crucial point.

On the other hand, thinkers like Marx, Comte, or various liberal philosophers didn’t really introduce anything new to the concept of “salvation” either; they merely swapped one central figure for a different set of entities.

This might seem like a logical leap, but I have to ask: who was the last thinker who actually attempted to solve the “human problem” in a qualitative sense?

And, going even further: are we even capable of a qualitative resolution? Or have we moved past the threshold of intellectual diversity required to generate truly fresh ideas? (in the sense that we operate from the same premises all across the globe)

Honestly, I don’t have any answers.

7

I don’t see consistency in the future predictions, as stated in the op. For example, #1 says that we must become interplanetary due to apprehended problems with living on earth. However, #2 turns this right around, and says that technology is capable of eliminating these problems which would produce the need for #1.

Since these two are quite contradictory, we could ask what does Musk truly believe, will technology produce “sustainable abundance”, or should we take off to suffer life on an airless planetary. But I don’t think there would be an answer to this question because I think he’s just playing politics. Statement #1 appeals to the pessimists of humanity, and statement #2 appeals to the optimists of humanity, so he manages to get support from people with two opposing attitudes.

This sort of back and forth, between opposing attitudes is evident throughout the listed future predictions. In #3 Neuralink is based on the idea that the biological human being is deficient, and needs to be superseded. However, #4 seeks to spread human consciousness throughout the universe. These two contradict, because if Neurolink is capable of producing a new form of intelligence, this would clearly not be human consciousness which is spread through the universe.

So there is actually a whole lot of unexplained inconsistencies between the stated predictions for the future, with no explanation as to how one can afford the reality of another. Therefore I conclude that these various and distinct platforms are just political rhetoric produce with the intent of garnering support, (especially of the financial type), for whatever project Musk will prioritize at a given time. And he seems to have been very successful so far.

1 Like
8

I completely agree with your observations. When writing the initial post, I chose not to delve into these details. The reason is that questions like the ones you’re asking presuppose a capacity for self-reflection—something the “progressive mind” is likely unburdened by (which, perhaps, is for the best).

With this approach, contradictions often go unnoticed; or, if they are spotted, they are immediately dismissed by introducing a new, third assertion (by the time an analyst manages to process it, that assertion has already been replaced by yet another one).

In reality, every point I listed contradicts the others, though I doubt the author ever made any philosophical effort to reconcile them.

My own goal was simply to work with what was “given” and offer you my own speculative take on how these ideas might be integrated into a coherent whole, free from contradictions.

Then again, perhaps the only criterion by which all these points can be linked is, in fact, their own self-contradictory nature—who knows?

9

But good questions. I’m not pretending to have the answers either. Most of the theorists I’ve read on technology are very good at defnining the problem and much less adept at providing alternatives.

I can certainly agree that Marxism helps little. Class is not what it used to be. In Marx’s time the world of the proletariat was very different in terms of lifestyle, and particularly leisure activities, to that of the bourgeousie. Not so now; everyone is a consumer, everyone is on social media, everyone is stuck in a screen. Look at Musk himself. Judging by the volume and content of his tweets, a huge proportion of his time is spent arsing about online. He’s ironically in that respect no better off than what used to be an entirely different class. And I’m not sure if that kind of dumbed-down democratization is more of a tragedy or a farce. But whatever it is, it’s not a world Marxist theory can extricate us from.

I can only say that no worthwhile future can be created while the vast majority of people are conditioned against their own creative potential. That is, where life is divided up into work we use instrumentally to provide leisure time in which we are used instrumentally. In this closed circuit, all that is really happening is that the economy expands using humans as fuel. There is no qualitative progress as far as our internal lives go. We don’t learn to better deal with the human condition. In fact, it seems to recede ever further from our control.

I’m rather fatalistic. But if I can, I’ll try to come up with something a bit more positive in a later post.

2 Likes
10

What is Musk selling?

Whatever the punters are buying…as well as some of what they are not …

Elon Musk is not a visionary. He is not playing 3D chess. He is the child of parents who owned an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa and has benefited from every ounce of that privilege and entitlement.

He is in America becasue for the past 50 odd years their Congress has reduced the tax liability of the ultra wealthy. He is exceptional only for the times in which he was born into.

I will give him credit for possessing an eye for talent. He also appears to be either the most risk tolerant person in existence…or it’s merely narcissism refusing to see consiquence.

He has one play. Throw money at a problem until you solve it…or get bored.

The Mars ambitions are likely the most comical. Humans will not colonize Mars under Elon Musk. He knows it…his hired gun engineers know it…but the myth is too powerful to let go of.

Marketing is.

He is merely tapping into what all successful or powerful people already know…humans love a savior. The savior doesn’t need to be real…or competent. They just require buy in and belief.

Musk is a cowboy who has ridden the horse of his own ego for quite some time. His gratification seeking and validation will be his downfall. Peter Thiel will be there waiting to pick up the potentially profitable pieces.

2 Likes
11

Interestingly, as we’re writing this, China’s AI bubble has already popped and everyone is staring blankly at the British and American stock markets to discern if the sell-off that happened last Friday is the western AI bubble popping.

Some are expecting something like the dot-com implosion of the 2000s. Others say the companies involved didn’t build out with credit, but rather corporate earnings, so they’ll all be ok.

Point is, no one needs Elon Musk to talk about AI. All the capitalist heavy hitters of the contemporary world are investing in it because they think it’s going to somewhat radically change the world.

Will it? My own opinion is that some humans will go in that direction, but some will actually go the opposite way, retrogressing technologically, losing skills, losing infrastructure, basically headed back to the stone age. I think that’s how we’ll ride out climate change, as a divided species. I think the anti-technology people will dwindle, but they might survive for a good while.

1 Like
12

Thank you for making me feel safe. :folded_hands:

13

You’ve got your kettle, you’ll be fine.

1 Like
14

I see nothing wrong with living in a way that closely resembles the lifestyle of our ancestors. The only area where I support progress is medicine—and even then, only because I believe a person shouldn’t have to die from the flu or spend years bedridden simply because the local healer happens to be uneducated.

On the other hand, there is something significant here, too: an injury or an illness—even one affecting a neighbor—brings us face-to-face with our own vulnerability. Conversely, the ability to replace a lost limb in five minutes distances us from that realization.

In my own case, a difficult-to-treat injury forced me to radically rethink who I am and how I live my life—a process that would have been impossible in a “perfect” future.

Looking at daguerreotypes from the past, I noticed how tired 19th-century peasants appeared, even at the age of 25 (though I cannot say for certain how old the people in these images actually were).

Furthermore, I identify as a “techno-pessimist” and do not consider technology to be an absolute necessity. That said, if I didn’t have the internet at my fingertips, my loved ones would likely have a rough time—they would be forced to listen to everything that you, as a reader, can simply scroll past…

1 Like
15

I was just thinking about how people who are adapted to city life may not realize how deeply that environment is embedded in their psyches. If they go to the wilderness, they can’t even see a lot of it because it takes time to adjust to the different cues. I don’t know what part of the brain is involved, but it’s almost as if being in the wilderness is a different language and it takes time to learn it. But then the opposite happens, if the wilderness has become your home, the city will be hard to take because it’s so foreign and senseless. A lot of it will seem absurd.

I grew up near a wild area, so I need it. When I lived in a big city, I would go and crouch inside a drainage pipe because there was wild stuff growing there. A fox visited me once.

I remember my father’s ramblings. Precious memories.

1 Like
16

The irrational hatred of Musk reached such profound levels a while back that people were keying Teslas and cybertrucks without knowing who owned them, so one must be suspicious of the usual anti-Musk fare as the residuals of that same species of political ire, driven as it is by media slop.

But it’s clear he’s revolutionized a number of important industries beyond what anyone could even imagine. Electric, flying, and self-driving cars. Self-guided rockets that can land themselves. Satellite internet available from anywhere you want. Electronic brain implants. To think about all the money we’ve thrown at institutions to solve these kinds of problems could be tackled and revolutionized by one wealthy autist inspired by science fiction is quite extraordinary. As far as I can tell he’s just trying to sell a better future.

17

Musk is easy to criticize - he’s eccentric and somewhat childish, which makes him vulnerable. Low-hanging fruit, in other words.

To rip on a person like that simply for dreaming big, in my opinion, speaks to one’s character.

People should save their harsh words for the other billionaires - the likes of Larry Fink, Peter Thiel, etc. - who make few public appearances and do not share their visions of the future simply because they could not stand the light of day.

18

You guys are right. I actually can’t wait to whizz around in my AI powered flying car connected to Starlink so I can doomscroll Tiktok reels via my electronic brain implant.

1 Like
19

I see. If we criticize the billionaires you like, that’s bad and speaks badly of our character, but if we criticize the billionaires you don’t like, that’s good and that speaks well of our character. Because you have a good character and only like good billionaires, whereas we have a bad character and only like bad billionaires (because we didn’t criticize them).

If you’d bothered to read the discussion instead of dropping in with a purely reactive defence of your ideological hero, you’d realize Musk wasn’t being criticized for “dreaming big”.

But now that you’ve taken your bow at his altar, have you anything of substance to add, for example, that might involve an actual argument, quote, or thought?

20

This is the typical reply I would expect from you.

I don’t even like Musk.