Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Martha Stewart: What Controversial People Teach Us

I got the following email from a reader over the weekend in response to my article, 6D Thinking: Bezos, Musk, & Buffett Learn Faster And Better Because They See Learning Differently:

I’ll be honest. When I got this email, I got a little triggered.

Whenever I write about something I’ve learned from someone who is controversial, I get emails like this from people who normally enjoy my writing. Sometimes, albeit rarely, even close friends have conversations with me to express their disappointment.

On the one hand, I love when people who resonate with my writing directly reach out with feedback and appreciation. It means a lot.

On the other hand, in this case, I felt triggered for a few reasons...

Part of me was frustrated and reactively thinks…

1. It’s okay for you to not like everything I read. You can unsubscribe at any time. Or maybe you can just ignore this post and read the other stuff of mine that you do like.

2. That’s fine. Maybe you’re not part of who I want to reach with this post anyway.

3. I understand your struggle with ideas/people, but what does that have to do with me?

Another part of me questions my own decisions:

1. Maybe this person is simply trying to offer constructive feedback.

2. Maybe I have a blindspot.

3. Maybe I have a bias of seeing the best in people that is causing me to lose perspective.

4. Maybe I should stop writing about people who I’m fascinated with but who are controversial.

5. Maybe I should turn off email replies so I don’t even see responses like this.

Most of the time I would just ignore the comment on Musk and bury the emotion. But today, I’m choosing to deeply reflect because emails like this are not one-offs. Rather, I believe they are canaries in the coal mine of an important cultural shift that has an invisible impact on thought leaders.

This post is my first attempt to publicly make sense of this shift. First, let’s hit on the elephant in the room…

Many of the thinkers, innovators, scientists, and leaders beyond Elon Musk that I have grown up admiring have become controversial

Over the last 10 years or so, many of the people that I grew up admiring, laughing with, and learning from have become controversial. And the trend seems to be accelerating rather than slowing down.

Writers: Recently, writers Michael Lewis and Walter Isaacson are being chastised in the media for their recent biographies of Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried which are considered too glowing. Some critics say they are throwing away their reputations.

Entrepreneurs: Jeff Bezos is being criticized for building a mega yacht and has been criticized for Amazon’s labor practices. Bill Gates has been criticized for shorting Tesla and meeting with Jeffrey Epstein too many times to raise philanthropic dollars. Steve Jobs was considered needlessly cruel (especially earlier in his career), and he avoided paying child support for his first daughter.

Artists: Kanye West has said several things which are anti-semitic. Picasso would be considered a misogynistic womanizer by today’s standards. Dave Chappelle and JK Rowling are considered transphobic. Kevin Hart stepped down from the Oscars when an old joke tweet with a homophobic slur resurfaced.

Hosts: Famed interviewer Charlie Rose was accused of repeated sexual misconduct. Joe Rogan has been accused of being a far-right host that interviews fringe conspiracy theories.

Scientists: Going back further in time, Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman would likely be considered a womanizer. Einstein married his cousin and treated his first wife horribly by today’s standards.

Leaders: George Washington bought the teeth he used as dentures from slaves. Thomas Jefferson had enslaved 600+ people over the course of his life.

Humanitarians: In the world of humanitarian work, Gandhi performed celibacy tests, which included sleeping with naked young women (including his personal doctor and his grandnieces Abha and Manu, who were then in their late teens and about 60 years younger than him. Even Mother Teresa has become a controversial figure.

How do we reconcile the gap between these people’s great work and their human flaws and their public perception? How do we separate the innovator from the innovation? The art from the artist? Or do we?

Where do we draw the line between exploring someone’s humanity, learning from them, and admiring their work versus talking about them with disclaimers versus turning them into an untouchable monster (i.e., Harvey Weinstein)? How do we deal with people accused of crimes who haven’t been tried in a court of law (i.e., Woody Allen, Russell Brand)? When are people who are found guilty and do their time allowed to be written about in a human way again (i.e., Louis CK, Martha Stewart, Elizabeth Holmes)? What about trials where someone who is innocent is found guilty?

These questions are hard because they are so personal. Dozens of Charlie Rose interviews have informed me over the years. The comedy specials of Louis CK and Dave Chappelle have made me laugh. The innovations of Apple have improved my life. The stories of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Jeff Bezos inspired me to become an entrepreneur in the 1990s. Before Kanye West doubled down on anti-semitic comments, I was sharing the documentary on him with friends, because I found it inspiring.

This article is my personal exploration of these questions…

The Overton Window Of What Thought Leaders Can Say Is Shrinking

My current approach to research often looks something like this:

• Decide on a thing I want to improve at

• Find top people in the world who embody that skill or who have researched it

• Study their work and their interviews

• Extract lessons

• Test those lessons in my own life

• Synthesize those lessons from other greats

• Craft an original idea

• Test that idea in my life

• Write about it

Because of the current climate, I feel pressure not to research someone if they are considered controversial even if they are the best at a specific skill. And one challenge is that more and more “greats” are becoming controversial in the transparent light of social media, the mainstream media, and today’s culture.

Other times, there are people who are fascinating to me not because they are perfect, but because they are imperfect. For example, even though I lost $40,000+ from FTX going bankrupt, I’m still fascinated by Sam Bankman-Fried’s story. I’m particularly fascinated by the good and bad decisions he made as a result of his neurodiversity. Neurodiversity runs in my family, so I’m particularly attuned to it, and I think most people misunderstand it. Because of the current climate, I feel uncomfortable even expressing this curiosity publicly, and I haven’t seriously explored writing an article about it. Perhaps pulling the thread of curiosity would have led me to explore how many of Silicon Valley’s legendary entrepreneurs are neurodiverse and write about that. Maybe I would’ve. But, I’ll likely never know.

For example, Musk is undoubtedly one of the great innovators in human history. Yet, I feel an outside pressure that has been internalized to not reference him even if I am fascinated by his decision-making related to innovation. Or I feel pressure to say bad things about him for every good thing I say in order to equivocate and make it clear that I’m not worshipping him as a fanboy.

At first, this shift may not seem like a big deal, but the more I understand what’s happening, the more I understand how it’s everything.

Because one of the most fundamental decisions we can make in our lives is who we choose to learn from, how we choose to learn from them, and what we choose to learn.

Given that writing articles is a major part of how I learn and think, deciding who I do and don’t write about has a major impact on my life. It changes what I think and who I become.

Said differently, more and more notable figures and ideas are becoming controversial as they say or do things outside of the rapidly shrinking Overton Window, and that’s a big deal…

I’m concerned about where this shrinking Overton Window could lead to. I could see myself feeling pressure to avoid many controversial topics that I either:

• Stay true to my current approach and get labeled as controversial myself

• Play it safe and lose my passion for writing, because I’m no longer following my curiosity.

By receiving emails and comments from readers whenever I highlight someone they don’t like, I feel a subtle pressure to simply not talk about those people because I know that some readers who are normally a fan of my work will like it less. This resistance likely causes me to unconsciously pass on article topics that are interesting to me because they feel like they’re just too much trouble.

In other words, as thought leaders, any time we touch on something or someone controversial, we risk going from the reader’s in-group to their out-group. As a result, we risk going from friends to foes of entire groups. Sometimes, we just don’t want to go through that real or perceived stress.

This chilling effect is universal. That’s because any time we see someone else being criticized for “platforming” a controversial guest or idea, we unconsciously absorb the understanding that we’ll be next if we’re not careful.

I’m also fascinated by the topic for another reason…

Deep Thinkers I Have Long Admired For Their Cool Rationality Are Becoming Impulsive And Irrational

I’ve seen many thinkers who I deeply respect get labeled as “controversial” and then become polarized and lose IQ points. And I want to better understand how this process happens.

For example, podcast host Dwarkesh Patel wrote a lengthy essay challenging one of luminary Marc Andreessen’s ideas on artificial intelligence. Patel was blocked by Andreessen within 90 minutes even though Andreessen had been a former podcast guest on Patel’s podcast and the two were on good terms:

I was particularly surprised by what happened because Dwarkesh wrote a well-reasoned, well-researched response. And I’ve long respected Marc Andreessen as an entrepreneur, investor, and heterodox thinker who takes a lot of perspectives into account.

Something is wrong when a thinker like Andreessen simply blocks someone who has a different, researched perspective than his on such an important topic. By blocking Dwarkesh, Andreessen is saying, “Not only do I disagree with your post, I will never talk to you again.” This feels like a sign of compromise, not a healthy online culture where opposing ideas intersect and grow from each other.

I’ve seen similar things happen with other innovators, thinkers, and artists I admire:

• Stanford-trained neuroscientist and master meditator Sam Harris called out and then cut off his friend and biologist Brett Weinstein based on his COVID analysis.
  

• Nassim Taleb blocks everyone who shows the slightest disagreement. And, he has increasingly attacked the character of other researchers who disagree with him or don’t engage with him in the way he likes.
  

• Through the amazing podcast, The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, we actually get a balanced perspective on the contentious and escalating conflict between Rowling and many of her former fans. The podcast helped me feel empathy for both sides while also having me feel sad that there seemed to be no hope for resolution.

• Sam Harris and Ezra Klein got into a heated debate when Harris had Charles Murray as a guest. Charles Murray is a researcher who wrote The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, which showed that different ethnic groups have different average IQs. Then Vox (the publication that Ezra Klein was the editor-in-chief of at the time) responded with an article critical of that choice. This led to a public back-and-forth between Klein and Harris. Eventually, they attempted to hash things out via a public podcast, but it devolved into their talking past each other and assuming bad faith.
  

• On October 22, 2022, Elon Musk quote tweeted a conspiracy theory article about Paul Pelosi to his 112 million followers. The tweet came in the wake of an attacker beating Pelosi unconscious with a hammer. The article suggested a theory that the assailant was a male prostitute whom Pelosi had met at a gay bar. Musk wrote, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.” A few hours later by the time the tweet had 28,000 retweets, Musk deleted the tweet. Later, he said it was one of his worst mistakes. But, how does someone who is so smart with such a large platform make such a stupid mistake in the first place?

As situations like this pile up, one must wonder, what is going on with all of these people? It’s almost like they’re all catching the same disease that attacks the brain and hurts judgment.

It’s almost as if there is an incredibly strong force that radicalizes people once they become labeled as controversial figures and makes them less rational. The process seems to go something like this…

• They are attacked by people who used to be their allies.

• They are embraced by people who used to be their enemies.

• They attack the people attacking them for mislabeling them and losing touch with reality.

• More and more of their ideas shift further and further away from their original position and come into line with the new ideology and in-group.

Bottom line: How we manage the Overton Window and how we handle the polarity of society are now two of the major decisions we make as thought leaders.

To put the bottom line in context, famous investor Charlie Munger gives the following advice:

Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward. What happens if all our plans go wrong? Where don’t we want to go, and how do you get there? Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead — through sloth, envy, resentment, self-pity, entitlement, all the mental habits of self-defeat. Avoid these qualities and you will succeed. Tell me where I’m going to die so I don’t go there.

Similarly, we need to understand what’s going on with these individuals so that we can avoid it as we enter the public sphere ourselves and share our thoughts with larger and larger audiences.

Rather than being reactive in the moment or becoming radicalized myself over time, I’m choosing to create principles that I can come back to and continually evolve…

Principles On Writing About Controversial People And Topics (Version #1)

I am calling this Version #1 because I’m actively focused on evolving it. My ultimate goal is to develop a set of principles that align with truth while being cognizant of contemporary culture.

Furthermore, my goal in writing this post isn’t to prove myself right. I enjoy researching and writing when it expands my perspective. I love the feeling of suddenly being able to see and empathize with another perspective that I previously couldn’t. I appreciate the confusion that arises as I lose my clarity and start to synthesize a new take. Thus, for many of the principles I share the best counterarguments to my perspective that I’m aware of and that are actually pretty convincing to me on some level. Hopefully, this gives a perspective on how I like to think.

I’m very open to your thoughts in the comments.

With that said, here are my current principles…

#1: If we learn something from someone, it doesn't mean that we agree with everything they say or that we want to be them

#2: No one is all good or all bad

#3: Understanding is better than vilification

#4: Don't just learn from people who society/media agree are all good

#5: People should be considered innocent until proven guilty

#6: Always take context into account

#7: Be aware of trauma and neurodiversity

#8: Notice and manage my own triggers and biases

#9: Don’t judge someone’s entire life by a few of their mistakes

#10: Align with truth rather than ideology

Principle #1: If we learn something from someone, it doesn't mean that we agree with everything they say or that we want to be them

Elon Musk has 10 kids. He works 80+ hours a week. He fires off controversial ideas to tens of millions of people without doing deep research first. He seems to skate toward chaotic environments that are stressful. I don’t aim to emulate any of these things.

On the other hand, Elon Musk is one of the greatest innovators of all time who I believe is primarily focused on making a positive difference to humanity. He lives in a $50,000 house. Tesla and SpaceX are changing the trajectory of humanity. And his other companies have the potential to do the same as they evolve.

I’m extremely curious about how he has accomplished the impossible over and over. By aiming to understand that, I’ve learned a lot from him. For example, in 2018, I wrote How Elon Musk Learns Faster And Better Than Everyone Else.

I choose to write about the people I’m learning a lot from without equivocation.

Counterargument: Writing about anyone gives them attention. Attention is the leading of how we think, decide, and act. It determines the invisible frame around how reality is understood. Therefore, giving someone attention is not a neutral act. Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman calls this the Focusing Illusion: “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.”

My response: As a next step, I’d like to think more deeply about the principles behind deciding when it is best not to publicly give attention to a controversial figure even if I’m learning a lot from them in some way.

Principle #2: No one is all good or all bad

Another controversial figure is Jordan Peterson. Peterson has spent the majority of his career as a psychologist, researcher, and professor. His magnum opus, based on his research, is Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief.

However, he rose to fame by contesting a Canadian speech policy (Bill C-16). Since then, he has commented on an increasing array of topics from self-help to politics to free speech to climate change.

For example, he became deeply frustrated by Sports Illustrated featuring a plus-sized model on their magazine cover. So, he penned the following tweet:

Initially, he defended his tweet against the backlash:

Then 40 minutes later, he decided to leave Twitter. In doing so, he didn’t apologize for his tweet, but he did acknowledge that he should have added more context and nuance to his thoughts:

Frankly, I was very surprised by Peterson’s original tweet. He is a deep and nuanced thinker. He has said repeatedly that he hates controversy. He is a gifted communicator. Yet, he lacked the basic self-awareness to realize that simply sharing his frustration and opinion in 240 characters without context would come across as hateful and be misunderstood.

At the same time, I don’t think Peterson is an evil person for posting this, and I don’t think I should stop learning from him in areas where he’s an expert. And I do think that with his tweet he was trying to do something he thought was virtuous.

Takeaways:

• Beware of biases. We should be careful of the Halo Effect, which is our psychological bias to trust people’s opinions in many areas because they are successful in one area. For example, just because Jordan Peterson is an expert on psychology doesn’t mean he is an expert on climate change. Similarly, we should be careful of the Devil Effect, which is the inverse bias. We shouldn’t judge everything a person does as bad because he or she is bad in one area or makes a mistake.
  

• Be aware of context. Lots of poor judgment comes from people under extreme stress who are constantly being attacked online, in the middle of the night, on social media, and sometimes on sleep/mood pills. I don’t think context is an excuse for poor judgment, but I think it’s a factor. It’s fascinating that incredibly smart people with everything to lose are making the same mistakes. This leads me to believe that context may be more of a factor than people think.

Bottom line: No one deserves to be worshipped and (almost) no one deserves to be vilified. As the saying goes, “He who is without sin can cast the first stone.”

Counterargument: At the same time, I realize that I do have a line. Harvey Weinstein has produced a lot of amazing movies, but I’m not going to study his creative process. Him committing crimes does not change his skills as a producer, but it would feel wrong to study him for anything other than his mistakes and even worse publicly share my lessons learned. So, maybe just as Weinstein has crossed my line, for many others Musk has crossed their line.

My response: Same as principle #1, I need to think more deeply about where my line is and where I want it to be.

Principle #3: Understanding is better than vilification

I believe that we as humans learn the most from exploring what we don’t understand rather than vilifying it.

For example, one of my favorite quotes comes from one of my favorite book series, Enders' Game:

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them... I destroy them.
― Orson Scott Card in Ender's Game

In other words, if somebody’s actions were truly evil and we wanted to rid it from the earth, the best way to actually do this is through understanding, not by willful ignorance.

Vilification of parts of ourselves or another human being risks having the opposite of the intended effect.

Counterargument: Ideas are powerful. They can spread like viruses to other people’s minds. Part of me can understand a culture that tries to vilify people to send a super clear message about what is OK and not OK. Trying to see shades of gray can muddy the waters and create confusion. Furthermore, dehumanizing the enemy and seeing them as evil seems to be a prerequisite of war. And sometimes major wars are justified, as in World War II.

Response: On the other hand, words are words. They are very different than physical violence. Maybe one of the fundamental skills we need to develop as a society is the ability to appreciate or at least understand ideas that seem unfathomable, crazy, or even evil at first.

Principle #4: Don’t just learn from people who society/media agree are all good

Recently, two fascinating biographies have come out.

Walter Isaacson wrote a biography of Elon Musk. Michael Lewis wrote a biography of Sam Bankman-Fried (founder of FTX). Each writer spent 2+ years interviewing and shadowing their subjects. So, they had unprecedented access.

Each has come under fire for not vilifying their subjects more. Below is a sampling of the typical headlines of articles about their ideas and about them as individuals:

Both cases are fascinating to me. I’ve spent hours watching each of their interviews on their respective book tours. Both journalists got more access to their subjects than any other journalist in history. Both were almost universally loved journalists. Both came to conclusions that went against the traditional narrative, and the only conclusion that most critics could come to was that these journalists somehow came under the spell of the people they were shadowing rather than that they might have seen something that others missed.

Bottom line: Just because a group of people or a culture generally comes to a certain conclusion about a controversial individual, that doesn’t mean that opinion is right. In fact, it is almost certainly biased because (almost) no one is all bad.

Counterargument: I may have a pre-existing appreciation of Elon Musk’s innovation and Sam Bankman-Fried’s neurodiversity that is making it hard for me to see their “bad” qualities as clearly as others might.

Principle #5: People should be considered innocent until proven guilty

I grew up hearing this idea, but I didn’t understand its significance until I read So You've Been Publicly Shamed in 2015 and then saw all of the warnings play out in the following 8 years.

One way that people become controversial and untouchable is by being accused of something by an individual and then the media spreading that as true.

The most recent example of this is the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial. After he was accused by Heard publicly, Depp lost out on tens of millions of dollars of income.

More and more, I am moving toward withholding judgment until I actually understand a fuller picture or the justice system has played out.

Principle #6: Always take context into account

As the pace of technological evolution accelerates, so too does the pace of cultural evolution. This means that something that’s okay to say today may be out of bounds in even five years.

Furthermore, anything we’ve ever said can be clipped, compiled, and used against us at any time in the future.

Therefore, it’s important to be aware of clips used to attack someone along with the context in which clips were recorded.

Principle #7: Be aware of trauma and neurodiversity

I also find that I'm personally fascinated with the links between trauma, neurodiversity, and genius. The more I study creatives throughout history, the more I see that many times the combination of these is a package deal in some respects.

What I’ve learned is that madness and genius are not on opposite sides of the spectrum. Rather, they are cousins.

Bottom line: It’s important to realize that people think in very different ways than us who are informed by DNA and life experiences. Therefore, what leads them to come up with crazy good ideas could also be the thing that leads them to come up with crazy bad ideas.

Counterargument: Having experienced trauma or being neurodiverse doesn’t mean we should accept that person’s worst actions, especially if they harm others.

Principle #8: Notice and manage my own triggers and biases

Polarization brings up a lot of emotions and builds on top of our pre-existing biases and affiliations. When I think about my future as a thought leader and the way the world is going, I see this as one of my biggest risks. So many of the people I admire as thinkers have become polarized and more irrational and impulsive.

This post is my attempt to follow this principle.

Principle #9: Don’t judge someone’s entire life by a few of their mistakes

Anytime we see someone’s actions shared on the media, we’re only getting a filtered version of it. The filtered version:

• Matches the biases and narrative of the person sharing the story

• Narrowly focuses on someone’s mistake

• Ignores the context in which the mistake happened

• Ignores how the mistake is or isn’t representative of their day-to-day life

Therefore, we should be humble. We can never know what we don’t know. And we shouldn’t blindly trust what we are told about others.

Counterarguments: Yes, but there are situations where a person’s limited actions should determine how they are completely judged.

Principle #10: Align with truth rather than ideology

We humans are tribal animals. Our beliefs often conform to the groups that we’re a part of.

I aim to strike a balance between:

• Participating, learning from, and influencing many diverse groups that I’m part of.

• Staying independent enough that I can synthesize my experiences in all of the groups into independent opinions that I stress-test and live by.

Warren Buffett’s wise long-term business partner Charlie Munger said it best when he advised…

I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another. And that is, I say, “I'm not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it.”

I think, only when I've reached that state am I qualified to speak. Now, you can say that's too much of an iron discipline. It's not too much of an iron discipline. It isn't even that hard to do. It sounds a lot like the iron prescription of Ferdinand the Great: “It's not necessary to hope in order to persevere.” That probably is too tough for most people. I don't think it's too tough for me, but it's too tough for most people.

But this business of not drifting into extreme ideology is a very, very important thing in life. If you want to have more correct knowledge and be wiser than other people, a heavy ideology is very likely to do you in.

—Charlie Munger

Conclusion

When I’m feeling pessimistic, I feel that the challenges we’re facing now in our public sphere are unresolvable. I worry that the idea of a melting pot and global village may just be remnants of the era of the long peace I grew up with and is coming to an end.

When I’m feeling optimistic, I think that humanity is in the middle of the largest migration in human history that will only happen once. We are increasingly moving more and more of our lives, reputation, and relationships online. And social media as it stands today is just version #1. As we learn about what works and what doesn’t, technology and culture will evolve into a system where our similarities will be larger than our differences.

I hope this article plays a small role in people’s sense-making on this topic and inspires them to proactively create their own principles rather than be unconsciously carried in the direction of the current tide.