Elon Musk: The SNAFU principle in action?

Elon Musk (public domain photo, source.)

Most of you are likely familiar with the SNAFU Principle articulated in Illuminatus!: e.g. "True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth."

For those of us who admired Elon Musk's achievements years ago in making rockets and electric cars, the word "disappointing" is not strong enough to describe his recent decision to become a James Bond movie villain. Richard Hanania, the writer and pundit, has two new Substack newsletters excoriating Musk. The latest, "Liberals Only Censor. Musk Seeks to Lobotomize," explains why it's been so damaging that Musk punishes X.com users for posting links to credible news sources. "The new X elevating trolls, liars, and fake news accounts means that the reach of more sensible and honest voices declines in relative terms," Hanania writes.

But the essay that is more relevant for this blog is "Why Billionaires Go Insane," which does not reference the SNAFU Principle but reaches remarkably similar conclusions. (The subtitle for the piece is "Great wealth creates unusual personal dynamics.") Here is one paragraph (the emphasis is mine):

If the billionaire puts forward an idea, the successful flatterer won’t jump up and down and say “oh my God. YOU’RE A GENIUS.” Instead, he will think about it, start looking for confirmatory evidence for that idea, and come back and say “You know that theory you told me about? I was skeptical at first, but I looked into it, and wow, let me tell you, it explains so many things you didn’t even consider.” Occasional diplomatic pushback is fine, and in fact adds credibility. But the flatterer wants the billionaire to feel like he is fundamentally correct on the big picture questions he cares about the most. Telling him he is simply wrong on core issues or that he needs to rely on completely new sources of information to have a sensible worldview is not going to work. The billionaire therefore gets more and more convincing sounding feedback that serves as confirmation bias.