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Comment by nerdponx | Hacker News Reader

Was Steve Jobs not a megalomaniac surrounded by a cult of personality?

Very interesting point. I think the difference is apparent, but how to define it?

First, while he was very confident, I don't know that I'd call him a megalomaniac. Second, he didn't encourage a cult of personality or manipulate it - he didn't spend his time inflaming it, encouraging it, toying with it; and he didn't use his power to troll and disrupt society.

Jobs definitely did all those things, he was just edgy in a (now) more socially respected way, but he definitely wasn’t at the time.

Pretty much.

The only difference between Jobs and the others is that Jobs made more stuff that consumers like, and was more successful.

Humanity loves a successful megalomaniac. They just despise the also-rans.

That's probably it. Jobs was a prick but not like Trump in many ways. I mean he was actually rich instead of just playing the part for one, lol.

Both are/were actually rich. The difference is that Trump was loosing money his dad earned while failing upwards again and again.

I think the closest contemporary equivalent of Steve Jobs is Elon Musk. Clearly egotistically and self-obsessed, but never-the-less a very impressive person who is deeply involved in the details of the everyday running of their company, and is creating things that nobody else could in quite the same way.

Elon is just strange.

He... does not seem like he would be as successful as he has been, to hear him talk.

I haven't researched him much if at all.

But I genuinely wonder how much of his success is simply the fact he had the seed capital and was utterly fearless. What important lesson do you learn about from following Elon Musk, other than "just keep going."

I think the seed capital and fearlessness is part of it, but I think he's also a damn smart engineer and by all accounts he gets down into the details of projects his companies are working on at times.

(Uninformed view)

I feel like a part of it is a refusal to be accept anything other than a very thorough explanation of why something is the way it is. He's not going to accept someone saying "nah, can't do it that way" at face value no matter who tells him.

He has challenged a lot of assumptions, to his benefit

Elon Musk is more than just strange. He's definitely stranger than Steve Jobs, but also has his cult of personality, he picks stupid internet fights, takes on ridiculous challenges, and over-promises on them, but although he under-delivers on those promises, he does deliver. And what he delivers, still has had a massive impact.

At the same time, he constantly seems to be teetering on the edge of destroying his whole enterprise. Jobs was more careful, less extreme.

Before or after he got fired from Apple?

Maybe that experience is the difference between those two?

Elon Musk is a performer. He's one of the few people in his generation that is, as you mentioned, fearless and with capital and that understands digital culture. He's like someone from the 50s who sees an Elvis Presley show and immediately starts printing teen heartthrob magazines because he knows those girls will pay ANYTHING for more Elvis.

Or maybe a digital politician? He's just talking about electric cars and space to fire up his base instead of abortion and guns. It's also why he seems to 'do' something real just often enough that people can't dismiss his intelligence entirely: His main projects are population management and public relations; the tech is just the 'flavor'.

> Jobs definitely did all those things

Not to my knowledge, and in fact I remember Jobs as generally an honest, sincere person (among many other traits). Can you provide examples?

Consider, for example, Musk's personal attacks on people like Elizabeth Warren. IIRC, Jobs did nothing like it. Jobs also didn't compare the Canadian Prime Minister to Hitler, and much of the other endless attention-grabbing, disruptive behavior of Musk.

I'm confused by the categorical distinction you are trying to make between Jobs and Musk. What's the problem with electric cars that (almost) drive themselves, rockets that land themselves, and broadband internet in remote places?

Elon is manipulating markets with his tweets (See the 420 debacle), insulting random people and lying about how advanced FSD is.

Please look at all the crazy tweets he posted [1] in the last few years, he is a manipulator and a liar.

[1] https://elonmusk.today/

I’m not sure I would agree that this is lying or manipulation in the way that you would normally define those things.

I do think Elon is a bit of a troll, and also that he is prone to saying things that he thinks are probably true without really verifying them fully.

I think that he says things on social media with approximately the same level of internal surety that you might apply to talking to a friend in a casual situation.

You might be quite willing to say to a friend “we are going to finish the X project in 6 months” without really calculating the odds of that actually happening, and without your friend calling you a liar in 6 months when that doesn’t happen.

Now you can argue that he should apply a larger degree of rigor when positing on social media because he is a famous person running a big company, and maybe so.

But he might also argue that why should he be held to a higher standard on Twitter than any random joe posting garbage to thier feed for friends to read?

> why should he be held to a higher standard on Twitter than any random joe posting garbage to thier feed for friends to read?

Because he is an influential spokesman for one of the highest valued stock market traded companies in the world, and a throwaway comment can cost billions. I mean sure, if you're cynical enough you can pooh-pooh it as monopoly money for the 0.01%, but this same monopoly money fuckery caused the 2008 financial crisis. If he 'accidentally' crashes Tesla, that's hundreds of billions disappearing into thin air. Monopoly money, sure, but it'll drag down a lot of others - including things like pension funds.

Musk's financial trolling harms the same people who caused the 2008 crisis. Securitized mortgage debt and a desire to have what is essentially roulette-at-scale be predictable both come out of the same greedy hubris - that you should be able to move beans and become extraordinarily wealthy for it.

Who cares? Why do you take anything posted to twitter seriously? "Evil genius dominates world economy through twitter messages" is just not a thing.

Musk is relevant because of Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, and possibly a few other companies in the works. Maybe he gets some credit for PayPal too. Any one of those things would be sufficient to make his twitter personality a minor footnote in history.

he calls people pedos for no reason and then bitched about being sued

> electric cars that (almost) drive themselves

Vast overstatement.

So much of an overstatement that Musk has to compensate by calling it FULL self driving, and then break it down into levels of not full-ness.

The question seems disingenous, as I wasn't talking about their products. What about the things I was talking about?

He's the villain from Atlas Shrugged. Siphoning tax payer money to fund his bathtub fart bubble 'ideas'

He also calls people he disagrees with "pedos" and posts Hitler memes on twitter about vaccinations

The MIC siphons off way more money. He is saving taxpayers tons of money.

He probably would have had social media been more prevalent. It’s hard to say.

He wouldnt recognize his own family for years he was in every sense a psychopath..

He certainly recognized and loved his adoptive parents (from whom he took his name). I am not a great Jobs or Apple fan, but "psychopath" is way over the limit.

That was not the family i was talking about see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Brennan-Jobs

Many CEOs are apparently psychopaths. A psychopath doesn't have to be a remorseless killer. In fact, years ago I read an article about a psychiatrist or research who accidentally discovered that he was a psychopath himself, despite being a loving family man.

Psychopathy is more subtle than just the extremes that are popular in media. I'm far from the biggest Apple or Jobs hater, but I think there's a good chance that he'd fit the criteria for psychopathy.

The big question I haven't seen a good answer to yet is: why are CEOs so much more likely to be psychopaths? Does the power make them psychopaths? Are they attracted to the power of a CEO? Or do psychopaths actually make very effective CEOs? I have no idea.

I am on mobile at the moment so I don’t have easy cites, but most of the research on ‘high-functioning’ psychopathy tends to lend credence to the thought that in the Western market CEO’s job requirements make it much easier for psychopaths to excel. I know there is a book on the topic and it strongly suggests this is the case, just can’t remember what it is.

Edit: spelling

> In fact, years ago I read an article about a psychiatrist or research who accidentally discovered that he was a psychopath himself, despite being a loving family man.

Psychopats as "loving family man" do huge amounts of damage to members of their families. Yes, it is way more subtle then killing them with chainsaw. It is very real too.

> he was in every sense a psychopath

Not every person struggling with mental issues has psychopathy.

I guess the difference is, there was still a lot of substance behind Jobs. And delivering (mostly) good products.

Now we're dealing with Elizabeth Holmes et al, who just cargo cult off Jobs' legend.

Now we're dealing with Elizabeth Holmes et al, who just cargo cult off Jobs' legend

Frauds have always been with us - charismatic frauds, even. That's generally how they defraud. How many times have people sold things like the Eiffel tower or various bridges around the world? How else did we get to Ponzi schemes and the MLMs that are the fallout (and technically totally not pyramid schemes)?

> Frauds have always been with us ...

This is the excuse of frauds - to try to normalize it. The amount of fraud is something we can have a large impact on, just like other diseases, and the frauds are responsible for their behavior - there is no fate or destiny that makes them do it. They have free will and make choices to hurt others.

Currently, we aren't doing enough about fraud, and it's Orwellian to see people making efforts to normalize it.

It isn't that folks normalize fraud, but rather that fraud has been a thread in humanity for, well, a very very long time indeed, probably before we wrote this stuff down. In other words, it is normal for societies to have some fraud - though, it isn't a "normal" behavior since most folks aren't out defrauding folks on a large scale. People act like fraud is a modern thing, and it isn't - and definitely isn't a sign that we are just doing worse now than in some romanticized past.

If we don't acknowledge that it is a thing humans do and have done for a long time, our solutions will never be adequate (if that is possible). We really should be learning from the past and applying some of those lessons to the modern ways folks do fraud. Charisma has been intertwined with fraud for eons as well. If something is fairly common among fraudsters, then it benefits us to point this out.

That's quite a strawperson - I haven't seen anyone say anything like that. Can you give some examples?

The issue is the amount of fraud, obviously. My point is that people keep trying to downplay it and normalize it, including, IMHO, the comments in this thread. My perception is that the amount is much higher now than even the recent past, and that it's normalized and even celebrated by some.

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