elon musk's obsession with the tic tac toe of video games
elon musk's obsession with the tic tac toe of video games
We all know Elon Musk as the funniest man alive.
but did you know that Musk is also a lifelong gamer? for example, here he is in the chess club of his whites only apartheid prep school.
grew out of that though.
really want to highlight the phrase "understandable when all we had to play with were squirrels and rocks." what the fuck is he talking about?
in any case, he clearly has some issues around the game and I suspect his performance in the chess club. the dude loves to downplay the complexity of the game.
he knows how to tune it up, though.
hmm. fog of war, tech trees, randomized starting positions. that actually sounds a little familiar. could it be...?
OH YEAH BABY! you knew it had to be polytopia!
what the fuck is polytopia?
this is polytopia:
sophisticated Gamers will notice three things here:
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this is clearly a mobile game first, meaning it was developed to fit into the industry's nastiest shithole: the ios and android app markets. i'll tell you right now that polytopia doesn't have gambling in its microtransactions (which instantly makes it cream of the crop), but you can expect it to be braindead and shallow.
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this game is for children. look the bright primary colors, the character's huge eyes, and the low poly style, which evokes minecraft.
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this game looks a LOT like civilization. specifically, it looks like civilization 3:
For those not familiar, the civilization series is the standard bearer for the 4X genre. it's a style of slow, macromanagement focused turn based strategy focused on the "four Xes" of exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination. thematically, they present societies as machines for producing imperialism. the civilization games are also fearsomely complex and famously deep.
not so with polytopia:
so yeah, it's baby civilization. but the thing that really kills me is that musk is obsessed with this game. like... really obsessed, according to a story published on yahoo finance.
This puff piece is sourced from "Benzinga," a tech finance news site that seems to mostly post about crypto, ai and tesla. context clues suggest the content is entirely ripped from walter isaacson's biography of musk. I have to emphasize that all of this is intended to be flattering - right in the middle, they take a break from the content to shill some affiliate link I won't click on:
that's the image of musk they want to convey. anything they include is in support of that.
saying "I am just wired for war" because you play a lot of polytopia is classic elon cringe. beating a game's developer is nothing to brag about, by the way. most game developers are terrible at their own games.
i would argue that ragequitting to the parking lot to smack down your employee/mother of your children in a baby game is also not something to brag about:
flexing on mom almost shows up more than once in the article...
... except, twist, for some reason he beat his employee but not his partner???
and yes, he sulked like a little shitbag he when he lost. one has to suspect that if his sycophants weren't constantly throwing polytopia matches against him he'd have turned on it just like he did chess.
before you read this next bit I want to emphasize again that EVERYTHING IN THIS ARTICLE IS INTENDED TO BE FLATTERING.
his brother seems to feel the same way
(and from another benzinga sourced yahoo finance story):
here's what i think: elon musk isn't learning shit from polytopia. he's a profoundly stupid and childish man who likes moving brightly colored blocks around and being told he won. he's projecting the disgusting and wretched pile of deficiencies which is his personality onto a game for babies. as someone who only fails upward and cannot stand to fail, it is impossible for him to learn from reality; doing so would require facing what is too painful to face.
Don't mind me, just imagining a brighter world where the people in power learn Settlers of Catan instead of Chess or Civilization.
I love both the content of this post and the fact that it’s a self-contained torture test for our pict-rs upgrade
also, lol @ musk, war genius, starting a domestic dispute with his ex-girlfriend cause she dared to betray him in his baby mobile 4x game when betrayals are a core part of every 4x I know
I’m getting the strong mental image of musk being the guy who flips the board 12 hours into Twilight Imperium cause the other players didn’t let him win
polytopia was pay to win, my roommate would google the tier list and grab the best one lol, man would 3v1 us
A lot of these 'there is more stuff in it so it is more complex than chess' feeling games aren't that more complex in a lot of ways as there are often strats that are optimal (like picking the meta starting options (thought polytopia didnt have microtransactions however)), add to this asymmetric start positions which can throw balance even more out of wack (bigger asymmetry than just white goes first). It is a bit odd that the megagamer Musk has not reached this pretty obvious conclusion about how games that have a lot of broad things (aka content/possibilities space) do not have the depth of chess.
Pretty sure the squirrel thing is a Margaritaville South Park episode reference. When Randy is trying to save the town from the economy:
We must all wear sheets instead of buying clothes that need detergent! Instead of cars that take gasoline we can... get around on llamas from Drake's farm! Instead of video games that take batteries and software, our kids will play with squirrels! We must let the Economy know that we are capable of respecting it! No more needless spending! [everyone begins to cheer] The Economy is our shepherd. We shall not want. [stretches out his arms as the audience cheers him on.]
I have some minor things to say. First a correction (people keep saying this and it is a weird mistake) Grimes was his girlfriend, never his wife.
Then the whole thing where people say you gotta play this to understand his genius or whatever, that is all just cargo cult behavior, it is the black turtlenecks. (I recall a story of a university with a beloved, genius but somewhat odd professor to which the students looked up, they wanted to be like him. So eventually the students started to touch the walls when walking through the halls, as the professor also did that while walking, the cargo cult).
Zilis clearly understood the assignment of playing Polytopia with your emotionally stunted boss/owner (as in the business sense, clearly the workers should be their own owners), as do prob a lot of other employees he beats. Let the Wookie win.
“I am just wired for war”
Reminds me of the sort of image of the military general aristocrats of WW1 who made the war last longer and did one more assault just before the peace was signed because of their warrior honor whatever. Unrelated, here is a blog post of acoup (a real historian), listing various articles that the USA needs soldiers, not warriors (and explains the distinction), halfway somewhere.
"when you're playing a video game, there is no empathy, right?"
That is a darkly revealing quote (like the whole thing is). More points for Zilis and the others who let Musk win.
First a correction (people keep saying this and it is a weird mistake) Grimes was his girlfriend, never his wife.
whoops! edited
on my part I think it's because I keep seeing Elon described as having "divorced energy"
(I recall a story of a university with a beloved, genius but somewhat odd professor to which the students looked up, they wanted to be like him. So eventually the students started to touch the walls when walking through the halls, as the professor also did that while walking, the cargo cult).
side side note I was friends with a former military intelligence guy and he told me the mathematicians in his facility were nicknamed the "finger draggers" or something like that because some of them had that habit
on my part I think it’s because I keep seeing Elon described as having “divorced energy”
It is also a very common mistake people make (or a 'joke', in some way I don't get but there are a lot of weird jokes/rumors about musk which people take for granted (which is worse as blueanon people are now on the job and are just making shit up (yes, im talking about and still angry about the Seth A. post))) so it happens. Wonder if it would have been better or worse for her and the kids if they had gotten married.
finger draggers
Could be the same story which got telephoned into my story. I also only heard it from a different person ages ago.
@sc_griffith he is a Pathologically Divorced man
I just want to focus on this extremely ridiculous quote as if one understands how unfathomably silly it is - it becomes impossible to take anything elmo says seriously (not that you should need more proof)
What elmo is trying to talk about is called game-tree complexity - the number of possible games based on the number of possible moves.
For checkers this is 10^54 - massive but obviously computable (took 18 years and finished in 2007)
For chess this is 10^120 - called the Shannon number is unimaginably large - like if we counted it in Planck times (smallest unit of time) - checkers' number would convert to about 300 years - chess on the other hand comes out to around 10^58 universe ages
What's more - there's about 10^80 atoms in the universe - so it's physically impossible to store that many game states in a usable manner to compute a full solution of chess.
Even giving him the biggest benefit of the doubt and turning the whole observable universe into a black hole (the most information dense object imaginable) the Bekenstein bound still dictates you only have 10^96 bits to work with - so it's seems totally impossible to store a full solution of chess in our universe.
Overall this proves the point of this post - elmo literally does not believe he lives in the real world and any proof otherwise will get rejected by his solipsistic brain.
The way Checkers was solved was actually pretty cool. That he dismisses chess for this reason (even though it hasn't even been solved) speaks to the kind of dorky dipshit he is.
PS: this solution was considered AI in 2007.
[Schaeffer] carried out a mere 1014 calculations to complete the proof in under two decades. “This pushes the envelope as far as artificial intelligence is concerned,” he says.
I'm splitting hairs here, but wouldn't the 10^96 number just need to be a bound on the Kolmogorov complexity, whose value would be uncomputable? I don't think it's possible (even theoretically) to conclude solution storage is impossible, it's possible the Kolmogorov complexity is astonishingly low and there's an algorithm that could be stored on a drive today. It would just require brilliant insight to find it and no one is going to devote time to that for a variety of reasons, one of which is that unless they've successfully finished the task of finding such an algorithm there's no way to know if they're searching for something that doesn't exist.
That's fair - I guess that's why I said "it seems" as I can't confidently state something whose unknowns I don't fully understand.
But yeah theoretically there might be a way to compress the final output into a physically possible form. Still considering the magnitude of the numbers we're talking about - this would still be a mind boggling undertaking.
I guess my point was more around elmo confidently stating that chess is solvable and using the actual complexity of the task as a way to highlight how being that confident in such a statement is absurd.
Then again maybe I fell in a similar trap so thanks for pointing it out!
You know how when you're into something, and you hear someone speak about it so wrongly, with confidence, that it becomes immediately clear that they're full of shit?
That's every chess player reading his takes on chess.
That was also me when he pulled the PoE2 stunt.
Most people actually were kinda okay with the idea that he was legitimately high ranked in Diablo4; he does play games, and he clearly doesn't have a fucking job, so he could've grinded enough. But then that fucking amazing stream happened that proved he was just a sad little child.
Good thing he's being rewarded at every step of the way! All the proof I need that there is no god.
"Legitimately high ranked" in this context means "claimed he was top 50 by registering for an opt in leaderboard site with under 5,000 users". He wasn't good at diablo 4 either. Personally, I'm in the camp that believes he is buying accounts or paying individuals to play accounts for him 90% of the time. Dude even had trash stat distribution in elden ring, his build was both not meta and hardly workable, no stats at a breakpoint, set up to fat roll. No MLGS, just wearing extremely heavy armor and weapons with C int scaling that you get off the ground that way. Plus, tech genius that he is, took a phone picture instead of a screenshot. It would not surprise me to learn he save edited a bad character because the total level was quite high but the hovered weapon was unupgraded.
I mean hell, i'm a screaming dilletante and know he's fulla shit
I think that happens to him in many of the things he talks about, from games to running a website
I've played a lot of Polytopia in my time. Probably haven't touched it in over a year, but I used to participate in Discord tournaments and the like. Knowing I may have beat Musk mercilessly in a strategy game is nice.
I hope you have, tho I suspect he only plays against sycophants
We've got Chess 2, the Sequel and 4D chess that have solved any problems chess may have
Iirc there have been various sequels to chess, it being tried so often and never succeeding like chess is actually a interesting point of discussion in game development.
Perhaps the most successful "sequel to chess" is actually the genre of chess problems, i.e., the puzzles about how Black can achieve mate in 3 (or whatever) from a contrived starting position that couldn't be seen in ordinary ("real") gameplay.
There are also various ways of randomizing the starting positions in order to make the memorized knowledge of opening strategies irrelevant.
Oh, and Bughouse.
@Soyweiser @megaman remember when the Netflix show about chess got its own tie-in game? https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/346101/the-queens-gambit-the-board-game
you can't invent new pieces during the game
Yeah. That's what my (chess) captain keeps telling me.
Sounds like he sucks at strategy, on top of being a big whiny baby about it.
Polytopia is fun, but Jesus. I can't imagine bragging about a super simple 4x at all.
Good thoughts here
doing so would require facing a reality that is too painful to face.
This ties in directly with his belief that we're all in a simulation but despite that, somehow he is the only "real" person. It's also why he hides behind plausible deniability for dumb shit like cheating at games. He thinks reality doesn't matter, which is why he dangles it in everyone's faces that he's totally cheating in games and using alts on twitter, but "nyeah nyeah you can't prove it." It also lines up with the person he visited with at Auschwitz who stated it's worse than Musk being a Nazi, he literally just does not care. He was unmoved. He just genuinely thinks he's the only thing that matters.
The comparisons to Trump are apt. All Musk knows is that as long as he can lie to people he can make money, and he can use that money to obfuscate what he is doing to the courts and make them tied up for years in court to just prove the basics. He thinks none of it matters and is all a joke. He doesn't understand that other people don't have the means (nor the desire) to live life the way he does, because he doesn't understand us as real at all.
His inability to believe anything is real probably is manifesting as some kind of public humiliation fetish where he gets off on people knowing he's doing it but not being able to prove it. The Nazi salute and jokes are another aspect of this, treating reality as a total false, and treating truth and objectivity as things to be torn down because in his mind: it's not real so nothing matters.
It's all fucking solipsism with extra steps and he hasn't even done the philosophical legwork... He's just playing Polytopia and claiming it's more rigorous than it actually is because he's too much of a dumbfuck to know any better.
I think perhaps you're right about it being too painful to face, and a psychologist might describe his descent into solipsism as an avoidance technique. He would then argue to that psychologist "bUt YoU cAnT pRoVe iTs ReAl!" because as someone who is so averse to therapy, he thinks he can philosophy his way into proving he is always right.
He is a deeply, deeply unwell man.
side note, beating a game’s developer is nothing to brag about, by the way. most game developers are terrible at their own games.
Also, didn't turn out real hot for Stevie "Killcreek" Case... I feel bad for that woman and how she was treated by Romero and men in the gaming/game development space in general. Not a single one of her relationships with other folks in the industry worked out, and it all started because she was a Quake champ and beat Romero at a deathmatch. I still remember when she was on the cover of PC Accelerator... it's a testament to how badly the industry treated and viewed women at the time, nothing but a sexist trope grossly sexualizing her.
In OPs post it stuck out to me that Elon counsels his brother on shutting down empathy, to be a better CEO, and the brother complaining about how he, and not Elon, got the empathy gene.
Just coming out and saying that your brother doesn't feel empathy with other people is certainly a choice. So is presenting it as an advantage.
It’s all fucking solipsism with extra steps
or not, like when he told Grimes to her face that he thought she must be an ideal simulation for him
There's a good insight from this armchair psychoanalysis. The typical narcissist is technically capable of performing the whole pretend-to-care-for-game-theoretic-reasons behavior, provided that there is an incentive for them. However, if Elon genuinely believes himself to be Christ or Buddha or Roy, then his abilities don't matter, because he will never have the incentive to deflate his beliefs and face his own limitations and mortality. In short, Elon's attitude can't be adjusted and his mental health will never improve.
“Elon is funny” is akin to “Elon is in shape”
I mean, I thought the idea of him fitting in that suit was hilarious.
I'd prob have more respect for him if he said it was Plants vs. Zombies.
Gotta know when to drop that nut.
Elon prefers Command & Conquer 4
There is a concept I was once taught through a very long winded story about a master and his pupils, but thankfully the great Bruce Lee summarized it: "Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch and a kick was just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer just a punch and a kick was more than simply a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch - a kick is just a kick."
One becomes a beginner when they can see the thing. You become a novice martial artist when you can differentiate a punch from a person's arms flailing around.
One becomes an expert when they can define the thing. When they can lock down what a punch is, and can systematically separate it from other things that aren't it.
One becomes a master when they can intuit the thing. When you can use, identify, and understand the thing no matter what shape or form it takes.
One becomes enlightened when they can apply their specific masteries as generalization. When they have mastered the art of mastery itself.
Elon is certainly an expert. He can describe things. He can define things. He can reframe things into contexts that he understands. He's so tantalizingly close to seeing the truth, but is so far away from even comprehending how to begin connecting the dots.
I see where he is coming from regarding gaming and economics or organizational tactics. I have played many games at a competitive level, and a select few at a professional level. I know what he's trying to get at because I was very similar when I was like ~20 and didn't realize that the art of mastery of goes so far beyond anything an expert could fathom. I am by no means a master, but I see the trap of expertise and... maaaaannn... It's just so disappointing to see people in positions of power get stuck running in circles and holding everyone else back.
Elon is an Expert Beginner: he has become proficient in executing the basics of the craft by sheer repetition, but failed to develop meaningful generalizations.
The original Expert Beginner concept was defined here in terms of the Dreyfus model, but I think it's compatible with Lee's model as well. In your wording of Lee's model, one becomes an Expert Beginner when their intuition is specialized for seeing the thing; they have seen so many punches that now everything looks like a punch and must be treated like a punch, but don't worry, I'm a punch expert, I've seen so many punches, I definitely know what to do when punches are involved.
Elon is certainly an expert. He can describe things. He can define things.
I don't know what context you are referring to, but I don't think Elon is an expert at anything
One becomes a beginner when they can see the thing. You become a novice martial artist when you can differentiate a punch from a person’s arms flailing around.
One becomes an expert when they can define the thing. When they can lock down what a punch is, and can systematically separate it from other things that aren’t it.
One becomes a master when they can intuit the thing. When you can use, identify, and understand the thing no matter what shape or form it takes.
One becomes enlightened when they can apply their specific masteries as generalization. When they have mastered the art of mastery itself.
Thank you for sharing that concept, that's really good and I will keep that for future reference. It's a quality way to describe beginner to master and the difference at each stage.
this for the specific concept in japanese martial arts (and sometimes applied elsewhere too)
"He knows I have an empathy gene, unlike him..."
Keep that fucking gene. You'll need it to be accepted into a tribe when your brother fucks the global ecosystem. He won't save room for you in his bunker.
