Reflexivity — Part 1

Or, why is Elon Musk such a trash predictor?

Recently I saw this post going around Facebook (I’m old):

It linked to a long webpage showcasing just how bad Elon’s predictions are (an 84% fail rate!!) and how you, dear reader, could do better.

Which raises an obvious question:

Elon Musk is one of the smartest, richest, most powerful men alive. Just how can he be so bad at predicting the future?

Is he overconfident? Delusional? Playing 12D chess?

To answer that we need to talk about the fun little concept: reflexivity.

Enter Reflexivity

Most of my life was spent under the impression that the right way to approach the world was that of a scientist: stand outside a system, make a guess as to how it works, and test it.

But, over time, I noticed that in many of the domains I cared about most—politics, speech, girls—systems resisted that approach. In fact, they’d actively change in response to what I was doing. Especially girls, who usually changed to be farther away from me.

That is: there wasn’t really any way to not change the behavior of the very systems I was trying to figure out. And that basic insight—that the behaviour of some systems is responsive to our behaviour when we’re embedded in them—is called “reflexivity”.

And once you’ve seen it somewhere, you’ll see it everywhere.

Oopsie daisy.

How Reflexivity Shows Up

Reflexivity showing up everywhere is why this must be a bit of a different essay.

Usually I write just as an insight forms in my mind. The reason I sometimes succeed in guiding some of you to a different view is because I myself made that transition as I wrote, making it easier to tag along.

But this time is different. This is a transition I’ve been slowly making over years. And, as such, it’s hard to remember what life was like before. It’s just been a slow, steady drip.

So my only option is to throw the whole IV bag at you. I’ll do that by contrasting the "default” view with the reflexive view in several domains in quick succession. You can compare each to your own experience and decide which fits better.

(The IV bag apparently is in the form of a long unclickable image because Substack doesn’t let you do tables?? My apologies.)

In any case, hopefully that built up your intuition for reflexivity. Because now we’re gonna go back to our og question to check how much of the principle behind the table you actually grokked. (ay)

Back to Elon: Did You Guess It?

So.

Why is Elon Musk such a trash predictor?

…

(Seriously. Take a second.)

…

(There’s a clue in the title)

…

If you said ‘Because he’s not saying things because he thinks they’re true, he’s saying things to make them true’. Then 🎉 ding-ding-ding 🎉—you win, lmk in the comments and as a prize you can stop reading.

Elon isn't trying to predict the future—he's far too busy building it. A classic entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs understand that part of building the future is aligning everyone's maps, making sure we're all rowing in the same direction, that we all think the future looks the same way and thus end up building it the way we collectively imagined it. By presenting something as inevitable, as what will necessarily come to pass, we try to fix the future into place.

That is, Elon Musk is functionally acting the way the reflexive view above describes politicians as acting. He’s not making a prediction because he thinks it’s gonna happen, he’s making a """"prediction"""" to make it happen.

Elon understands that the success of his ventures ultimately depends on shifting common belief his way and, thus, he won’t ever make a public prediction. He’ll only ever make private predictions. In public he’ll exclusively share what cybernetic occultists call hyperstitions: beliefs or ideas that, through their very existence and spread, bring themself about.

But, and this is key, for the latter to work they must be presented as if they were predictions. They only work if everyone believes they’ll come about.

But if you, dear reader, like your Facebook friend above, genuinely took them as predictions? Well… that’s just bad hermeneutics.

Said differently: why is Elon such a trash predictor? Because he’s not predicting—he’s spellcasting

And it’s not just him. As I said, start noticing it and you’ll see it everywhere:

• “ETH is the next big thing.” (Oopsie daisy)

• “This is going to be huge.”

• “Lisbon is the next Berlin”

None of these are predictions. None of them are truth-apt propositions to be evaluated for their accuracy. They’re creative (from the Latin creō: to bring forth, produce) acts, hyperstitional speech-acts meant to bring something forth.

Musk, politicians, wordchads, priests, magicians… They’re all in the same business — A B R A C A D A B R A — “I create as I speak”.

In Closing

If you get the above, you get why politicians must lie have an esoteric story for insiders and another story for everyone else. To the chosen few you say what is, to the masses you say what you’re working to bring about.

And if you get that you understand the role that noble lies play.

Once you start thinking reflexively, a lot of puzzle pieces start sliding into place.

So, to end: in a world where maps shape territories, seeming “truth” is often just a well-cast spell.

Use wisely.