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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   32570 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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The war between Trump and Elon Musk is heating up. They've been continuously escalating the fight on both sides, with Elon claiming that Trump wouldn't have won without him.

On the other side, Trump is arguing that Elon only got upset because the Big Beautiful Bill has plans to cut the EV subsidies in it.

The major dispute, at least on a public level, is over deficit spending. Elon was pretty clear during the campaign that deficit spending was a big issue, and indeed most of the "grey tribe" Silicon Valley types who switched sides to support Trump also are starting to regret their decision it seems. Notably David Friedberg from the All-in Podcast, and I'm sure there are others if folks want to fill me in.

Either way, to me this breakup seems to be a clear split between the classic red tribe which Trump seemingly still controls with an iron fist, and the grey tribe that Elon Musk typifies.

To quote the famous Scott Alexander article, I can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup:

There is a partly-formed attempt to spin off a Grey Tribe typified by libertarian political beliefs, Dawkins-style atheism, vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up, eating paleo, drinking Soylent, calling in rides on Uber, reading lots of blogs, calling American football “sportsball”, getting conspicuously upset about the War on Drugs and the NSA, and listening to filk – but for our current purposes this is a distraction and they can safely be considered part of the Blue Tribe most of the time.

It seems to me that with the flip to Trump, we're beginning to see the classic Kingmaker dynamic unfold, where Silicon Valley billionaires are playing the third mediator between the two major tribes. I'm very curious to see how this pans out. Personally, I'm very much on the "hey we have to cut spending now" side of things.

Some of the more optimistic folks are claiming that Elon will either support the Libertarian party, or start his own party, based on a poll he made on X asking if a new political party should form.

Either way this is all very entertaining from my perspective, and it actually leaves me a bit more optimistic than I was that something will be done about cutting spending. We will of course see where the chips fall.

Devon Eriksen effortpost on Twitter

He argues that Trump and Elon are sort of polar opposite personality types in terms of "guile". Elon being an autistic engineer has and expects a "guileless" communication style devoted to simply conveying the truth as you see it. Trump being a Machiavellian type sees communication as a tool of power (see also Scott Adams' talks on "persuasion" and Trump) and wants loyalty with no expectation that he'll give it to you straight.

Notably, despite calling Trump "Machiavellian" he sees both people as earnestly trying to avert disaster for America, with Elon seeing the debt as the most important existential threat and Trump seeing immigration and entrenched bureaucracy as the most important existential threats.

Fascinating take overall and worth the read, here's the full text:

These guys don't understand each other.

Elon Musk is too guileless. He says exactly what he thinks is true with little regard for how others will react. He alienates allies by airing disputes in public instead of settling them behind closed doors.

Because he is a sperg engineer who leads companies of sperg engineers, and to do this, you must be 100% truthful and transparent.

Donald Trump is too guileful. He says exactly what will advance his plans with little regard for telling people what he actually thinks. He alienates allies by expecting their unconditional support without sharing any aspect of his strategic plans with them.

Because he is a New York real estate developer, who thrives on winning negotiations and gaining advantage from unshared knowledge, and to do this, you must be 100% calculating and opaque.

Here's what happened.

Musk worked super hard, and took great personal risks, to get a head start on balancing the federal budget. He correctly believes that federal spending is an existential risk to the nation.

Trump regards those savings as a political asset.

And, since he lacks leverage in congress, he took them and traded them for other things he wanted, apparently dealing with border control, the courts, etc... problems which he correctly believes are an existential threat to the nation.

He may have concrete plans for balancing the federal budget in the future, but, frustratingly, he won't tell his own team what they are.

Trump could have squared this in advance with Musk, in private, but he appears to either have assumed his loyalty (treating an ally like a subordinate), or been unable to persuade him.

Likewise, Musk could have raised his complaints in private, but either he was too upset to try, or was not able to reach an agreement when he did.

Trump doesn't understand how to deal with spergs. You have to tell them the truth, not expect them to read subtext. They refuse to read subtext. They want to be spoken to honestly.

Musk doesn't understand how to deal with Machiavellians. They think of language as a power tool, and think of those who insist on truth as naive.

Both men are used to being in charge, and are used to dealing with subordinates, who must cater to their preferred style of communicating.

They are both therefore uniquely unsuited to having both the patience and the capability to speak the other's language.

The truth is that both the federal budget and the federal bureaucracy are existential threats to America. Maximum priority.

Trump's concerns about the "art of the possible" are probably valid, but Musk's sense of urgency should not be dismissed lightly.

It is churlish to leverage the superior strengths and talents of people on the autism spectrum while making zero allowances for their unique needs.

That said, spergs can be frustratingly dogmatic, even when they aren't the richest and most successful man in the world.

A few other things to notice:

The democrats have said nothing. That's because there are no democrats. They have no independent intellectuals, only paid schills.

A response will not be forthcoming until the wholly organic grassroots PR committees have met, and the wholly grassroots talking heads have been cut a wholly organic grassroots check.

There's also a strong case to be made for Team Nothing Ever Happens. Remember that Musk will sometimes shut up when he calms down, and Trump has no problem calling someone the Antichrist one day and working with him the next.

I've always thought they had the exact same communication style -- they both constantly make low-effort lies and say things for the effect, not because they have carefully thought it through. In the Isaacson's biography there is the story about how Elon lied upfront about the number of users his company had when they were negotiating the merger to create PayPal. There are his constant claims that Tesla's car will be "fully self-driving this year." There were all his claims on X about finding some fraud that turned out not to be the case. Neither are Machiavelli types that careful plot high-effort technically true deceptions.

The other thing that comes up his biography is that Elon has never worked well under others, never gotten along well with a boss or controlling investors.

In almost all famous successful partnerships (Augustus and Agrippa, Washington and Hamilton, Jordan and Pippen, Jobs and Woz, Brady and Belichick), there is one person who takes to being the face, and one person being great at checking their ego and being a deadly efficient operator. Elon has too much ego to be the subordinate, deadly efficient operator. And Trump just isn't actually very competent and has a fragile ego, and so has trouble delegating to more competent people and sticking with that person's plans when the going gets tough.

This is perhaps the most charitable possible reading.

I don't see what it has over the theory that two narcissistic Machiavellians who both believe they run shit clashed and the one with the guns won.

I don't believe that Musk is 100% truthful and transparent, he's uninhibited (but not so much that he doesn't know what he's doing. As someone said below, he manages to ride the line in terms of how he signals dissident right stuff which implies he knows how controversial it could be).

Even if we write off his optimistic estimates about his various products, there's still things like him calling the cave diver a pedo without much the evidence. That fits more with him just being an asshole. Assholes are always telling it like it is, in my experience.

Elon Musk is too guileless. He says exactly what he thinks is true with little regard for how others will react.

This is wrong. Musk has been consistently serving slop to the masses on twitter. Things he could not possibly believe but that were yet flattering the average 110 IQ twitter user.

I propose that Musk is not guileless, he has guile but is also erratic.

Things he could not possibly believe

I'm not sure about this. Sam Harris' account of his bet with Elon indicated that he's way higher on his own supply than I thought.

He included a link to a page on the CDC website, indicating that Covid was not even among the top 100 causes of death in the United States. This was a patently silly point to make in the first days of a pandemic. ...Elon and I didn’t converge on a common view of epidemiology over the course of those two hours, but we hit upon a fun compromise: A wager. Elon bet me $1 million dollars (to be given to charity) against a bottle of fancy tequila ($1000) that we wouldn’t see as many as 35,000 cases of Covid in the United States (cases, not deaths).

And it also showed how that happens:

5.A few weeks later, when the CDC website finally reported 35,000 deaths from Covid in the U.S. and 600,000 cases, I sent Elon the following text:

Is (35,000 deaths + 600,000 cases) > 35,000 cases?

6.This text appears to have ended our friendship. Elon never responded, and it was not long before he began maligning me on Twitter for a variety of imaginary offenses. For my part, I eventually started complaining about the startling erosion of his integrity on my podcast, without providing any detail about what had transpired between us.

Thing is, this seems to have happened in private (at first). So it wasn't purely a matter of grandstanding for his proles.

Whatever his problems, Harris will at least tell you what he thinks. You start behaving like this with Twitter "friends" and you end up surrounded by Ian Miles Cheong types sucking your nuts and then all of the epistemic brakes are gone.

What do you mean? Example? I think Musk is politically naive, or guileless, he will tell directly what his plans are. There is no subtext, no reading between the lines, no scheming behind the scenes.

I muted him on twitter in disgust months ago. It wasn't really outright lies or manipulation, but basically he was pushing stupid ideas that were generally aligned with what he wants, but were obviously unworkable and yet a person with an IQ somewhere around 140 thought 'fine, I'll post this'. I like the guy for his contributions to space but he is just like his dad. Shameless when it suits him.

There is no subtext, no reading between the lines, no scheming behind the scenes.

That you know of.

Musk also routinely drives traffic to various random X posts by posting one-liners like "Interesting" or "100%" in response to them. Which, while not any sort of heinous deceptiveness, nonetheless is clearly just a way to put his finger on the scales of what gets amplified without having to literally manipulate the algorithms. It's not the kind of action that a pure guileless engineering-minded person would take, I would think.

I also find it a bit hard to believe that Musk would get $300 billion without having some understanding of Machiavellians. In our society, pure brilliant engineer-types tend to max out at a net worth of a few tens of millions, don't they? To get more than that people generally need to have a lot of business acumen, and it's a bit hard for me to imagine having that level of business acumen without understanding how to deal with Machiavellians.

I do think that the overall notion of Musk as being more of an autist type and Trump more of a Machiavellian type seems correct to me, but I quibble with some of the details of Davon Eriksen's purported explanation.

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