https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=BTsrytBL4cE
Alright, I thought I’d take some time and talk about this Twitter and Elon Musk thing because this is an issue of sense-making. How do we make sense of Twitter and Elon Musk? How can we understand this better or differently? So I’m going to give you some perspectives and some food for thought. I’m not going to tell you, you know, all that’s going on or anything because I don’t know. But I know some of the things that are going on and so I wanted to point out some of the absurdities. When we’re thinking about Elon Musk and, you know, I mean I did a video on money and I talked about Elon Musk in that video. It’s a good one, if you haven’t seen it you should check it out. And the reason why it’s important, it’s important to know why he’s got so much money and how he got it so quickly because these are mysterious things. And then it’s important to understand that people don’t do things for single reasons ever. They’re just not a thing. They may give you only one reason and they may only have one conscious reason that they’re aware of even. Fair enough. But people can’t possibly do things for one reason and it doesn’t actually make any sense. Do I think that he’s going to make 72 trillion or whatever in free advertising. And we didn’t mean to do that. And we apologized. Whatever. You people are dumb. That’s just stupid. So Elon Musk is all this going for, free advertising. He’s getting people interested in the platform through the free advertising, through the controversy, by creating two controversies at once. All of this helps his business. It all services the business. And it doesn’t just service like people now today. It also services who’s there now. Finding bots and getting rid of them. Or finding the illegitimate bots and getting rid of them. Finding people who are manipulating the system. And maybe he’ll help catch one or two. He probably wouldn’t catch a high number, but he’d probably catch one or two because these things can be done in certain circumstances if the people doing the bot manipulation make certain mistakes. And most of them do, by the way, because most people are dumb. And they make mistakes. People make mistakes all the time. And so there’s a lot of advantages to this. You can see who’s been swaying the platform. You can find out some of the bad actors. You can find out how many bad actors there are. Or at least get a better idea. So all of these things are playing in his favor. And that makes the business better going on. Because now he kind of knows, who’s my audience? Who am I catering to? Also, because announcing the poll on Twitter and just having a Twitter poll is getting announced on the news and written up in newspapers and articles and all over the web and talked about on YouTube and debated all over the place, now he has a pulse on the general zeitgeist outside of Twitter. And he can somewhat measure some of the differences. It’s not perfect. But it’s way better than no information. Right? So if you just do what you say and you just let everybody on in the middle of the night and nobody notices, you lose all that. That’s huge in business. It’s huge in the technology. It’s huge in understanding the world. And so, you know, and look, I’m not pretending like I know all of the good things that can come from a poll and all the reasons he did it. I don’t know the reasons he bought Twitter. They could be purely ideological. People use their money that way all the time, especially when you have that much money. People are like, 200 billion, 4 billion here, $4 billion there. OK, whatever. It’s cool. People don’t understand that. So it’s not that much money for him, I think, from what I’ve read, from what I understand. And you know, this is a good way to get the money back by getting Twitter involved. And you know, you can sort of pressure advertisers in the short term to kind of leave the platform, whatever, and they’ll do it and then come back, which they did, because it benefits them. Like, you know, you may think that you as, you know, culture warrior or whatever, have control because you can boycott and make them angry. But what people that run companies are smarter than you. That’s why they’re running a company and you’re a loser. OK, it’s that simple. So if you’re running a company, maybe not. But you’re probably not spending your time being a culture warrior or something, right? You’re probably too busy running your freaking business, you know, or your life or whatever. Right. And you’re not armchair quarterbacking, you know, one of the wealthiest people on the planet right now. Probably too busy for that garbage. So Elon’s got a handle on all this stuff and he’s using everybody for this. And people are sitting back and then the advertisers are like, oh, yeah, absolutely. We’re going to pull out our ads right away. And then a month later, when things blow over, because again, they’re smarter than you are, they buy ads back again because they don’t want to lose those eyeballs. And if they stir up controversy in the middle, they give you the impression that they were righteous and then they go back to doing what they were doing. Wealthy people do this all the time because they’re not idiots. In fact, in the United States, if you’re an idiot, you’re probably not also going to become wealthy. Good to know. And that’s part of the problem. We’re getting very, very confused about this ultimately. And you don’t want to be confused by these simple tricks. So if people think they’re gaining ground or Twitter’s going to fall tomorrow or whatever, I think you’re nuts. I wouldn’t bet against Elon Musk on anything. I just wouldn’t. It’s too unknown to me how good he is. And he has a lot of momentum behind him, not just because of the money, but because of the successes. And even though I very much disagree with some of his crazy claims with electric cars and self-driving and the tunnel project with the tunnel boring machines, I think those are silly and unrealistic. And going to Mars is certainly insane. Not that we shouldn’t do it, but his claims are just out there. He’s very much selling things that he knows he can’t deliver. And fair enough. He’s a good showman and he’s a good salesman and he knows what he’s doing and more power to him. So I’m not even mad about it. I’m just saying. And I still wouldn’t bet against him on any of those things, except maybe self-driving cars, because I know that’s not going to happen. There is an area of expertise I actually have. So I can say, nah, he’s fooling himself on a few things that’s going to happen. And maybe he is, because dreamers fool themselves first and everybody else second. And that’s how you fool people. Convince yourself first. So all this dust up around what’s Musk doing and why he’s doing it. I know why he’s doing it. I know what’s going to happen. You’re full of it. You have no idea. You’re probably not smart enough to see any of this picture, much less some of this picture. There’s a lot going on. There have been historically many people that buy businesses that they know are not going to be profitable. This is not an unusual thing. Most businesses fail. I think 95% of businesses or something fail within the first five years. Unprofitability getting into business is the norm, not the exception. And if you’ve got the money to spare, why not? Especially if you think it’s important. Or it’s a loss leader. I’ll buy Twitter a losing business. That’ll get me free press for all my other businesses and projects. And then I’ll get an investment in them, even for the people who think Twitter is not good. And on net, I’ll get more money. Maybe that could happen too. There’s lots of possibilities. So how do we make sense of this? Well, look, Musk probably bought Twitter because he thought it was important to make a change in the world because people are calling on billionaires left, right and center to make a change in the world. And of course, those same people, when those billionaires actually do something, they get all upset because then they feel manipulated. So yeah, but there’s no pleasing those people, obviously. You give them exactly what they ask for and they betch. So what are you going to do? People peopling. Also, yeah, I think that he has business reasons for doing this. Even if the business reasons aren’t I’m going to make money on Twitter because maybe he doesn’t think he is and doesn’t care because he thinks he’ll make up for that loss elsewhere. And maybe he will. I have no idea. Maybe he just wants to be a culture warrior and he has the money to do it and he had the business acumen to do it. And, you know, and he knows people are very short sighted. That’s why the whole lead up was, oh, you know, I just know what he’s doing and he’s going to get sued and then he’s going to be forced to pay zillions of dollars and then the whole world’s going to end up. People were just going nuts. And I was just sitting there like, no, this is a strategy. He knows what he’s doing. He’s trolling for a better price. I was right. Not to brag. I don’t think it’s brag-able. Lots of people knew. Lots of people were like, yeah, he’s just waiting to get a better price. And this is how you do negotiations. If you want to drag it into public, like if you have those skills, Elon Musk has those skills. All right. He’s shown it many, many times throughout the years. So no one should be surprised that that was strategy he went for. There are other strategies that he could have gone for, but that was a good one. Oh, you know, he’s firing all the engineers. Yeah, most software engineers are terrible. I’m sorry. They just are. Like half the software engineers have fewer years of experience in the industry. Bob Martin has a talk on that. Uncle Bob Martin, interesting guy, actually. Don’t agree with most of what he says, but man, there’s some nuggets in that. There’s some wisdom in people trying to prove their bad points while they’re being wrong. And he’s got a lot of it. Yeah, you know, a company like that that just does messaging does not need a zillion engineers. Almost every software company I’ve ever gone to work for has had twice as many engineers as they actually needed. The problem is most people don’t know who the good engineers and bad engineers are. And you know, I mean, like if you need to know, you can hire me. I’ll tell you. I’m very good at spotting talent, especially at software engineering, which is something I know a lot about. But most people can’t do that. And even the people that are very, very good at it, some people just hire people to hire people. Honestly, that happens in business all the time. Businesses are very, very altruistic. They really like to hire people. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a business because running a business is a pain in the keister. Let me tell you, I’ve done it. It sucks. I’ve watched. I’ve been in the C-suite meetings. Like some of these people, I mean, Jordan Peterson talks about this. Who the hell wants to run a Fortune 500 company? I have no idea. Your kids are going to hate you. Your wife is cheating on you and going to divorce you someday. You know, it’s no good. It is a rough life because you’re working 60, 80, 100 hours a week to run some of these things and not all businesses, right? But a lot of businesses, the people at the top are working a lot harder than you think. And not all of them. Like some people skate by and whatever, but not most of them. And businesses often just hire people to hire people. Like I had a mechanic who hired his stepson who knew far less about cars than I thought was possible. At some points I wondered if he even knew how to drive one. He put a distributor cap backwards on once and I was like, it’s notched. It has a notch so that you know which way it goes on and it doesn’t fit any other way. And he still managed to not be able to put the thing on correctly. Anyway, this is not a mistake I would make because I know cars fairly well. I know how to work on them. Certainly distribute caps. Really not that hard. People do that all the time more often than you think, even in large businesses. They hire interns that they don’t need. They hire entire departments that are completely unnecessary just to hire people. They really do. I mean, you know, and sometimes it’s the management down below and sometimes it’s the CEO is just like, we’ve got lots of money. Let’s spend it on people. I want to reinvigorate the community. That actually happens. It’s not just governments that do that stuff. In fact, it’s not primarily governments that do that. And when governments do it, it typically fails. So it’s good to know that people like Elon Musk are out there and are being altruistic in some of their decisions. Not all, but some. He’s not just some greedy capitalist who wants to get as much money as possible because it’s that. Everybody’s right. After a certain point, it’s not about the money. Right. That’s true. So why are they acquiring more money? Well, they’re giving more value to the world. It’s not that hard. Money is related to value in the future. See my video on money. Actually, two videos on money. So yeah, I mean, this is one way to start making sense of Elon Musk. Another way is to not listen to people who criticize Elon Musk who aren’t at least as successful or experts in a particular thing. So like if some legitimate rocket guy said, oh, Elon Musk’s rockets are terrible, I might have listened to him. You know, if somebody who actually knows AI starts saying, oh, well, I don’t know about the self-driving thing. I think it’s a failure. Maybe you want to listen to them and not Elon Musk. And that’s only a small part of his Tesla plan. But with business, there are zero business people I’m going to believe who are naysayers of Elon Musk. Zero. And that’s not even because I particularly believe that his businesses are going to be long lasting and successful in the end. But so far so good. And even if they’re not successful, or all of them aren’t successful, one successful one can bail all the others out. This is basically the strategy of venture capitalists. They’ll bet on 10 businesses, nine of them fail and lose money, and the 10th one makes a thousand X the initial investment or 10,000 X the initial investment, whatever it is. And so it’s worth it to invest in nine failing businesses to find the one that will hit when you don’t know. I don’t know if they still use that strategy. They certainly used to. And one in 10 was only the best VCs. The others didn’t have a record that good. So like I said, 95% of all businesses fail within the first five years, at least in the US. I don’t know what it is post-COVID here, but I suspect it might be somewhere the same, roughly speaking. So yeah, it’s good to think about these things in a larger context so that we can make sense of the fact that good things are afoot. I mean, there was one Thursday where Elon Musk single-handedly injected joy into the platform and the platform got fun and satire was back and people weren’t afraid to be edgy anymore and they were edgy. And that day, that one day on Twitter was a Thursday, I don’t know, three weeks ago or something, I think. That was one of the most joyous days. I did not think I could get that much joy out of my phone. I did not think that. I didn’t suspect it. I didn’t see it coming. And, you know, look, I’m grateful for Elon Musk for bringing that day to me because it was that good a day, just on the basis of the Twitter posts and the Babylon Bee was back and like everything was beautiful and glorious and people were being edgy and funny and happy and positive. And there was no political dumpster fire. There almost never is in my feed anyway. But the amount of positivity that was injected into the platform is amazing. We should be happy about that, even if we disagree with Elon Musk or whatever. If someone’s injecting joy into the world and happiness and positivity and hope for the future and all those things and someone’s bringing back satire or someone’s allowing people to joke when they weren’t, when they didn’t feel comfortable doing so, we should celebrate that. Irrespective of our feelings about Elon Musk or his fascist takeover of Twitter or whatever you want to because you don’t know what fascism is, you know, however you want to frame it. We should take that seriously. And that’s what we should focus on, right? Focus on the good. It’s not hard. Focus on the good. The world will make more sense when you focus on the why is this person doing this? I don’t know. Maybe there’s some good in it. Maybe just maybe. And, you know, there’s lots of things to focus on. But I think focusing on the good is a better way to sense make in the world and a better frame. And you should look for the good, too. Like you should look for opportunities to celebrate people being good and opportunities for you to participate in the good. Right? And I think, quite honestly, that you’ve done that by watching my video because you’ve given me something that I think is very good and focused towards the good, which is your time and attention.