(2025-06-29) Rival Voices Reflexivity Part1

Rival Voices on Reflexivity — Part 1. Elon Musk is one of the smartest, richest, most powerful men alive. Just how can he be so bad at predicting the future?

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

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

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.

Back to Elon: Did You Guess It?

So.
Why is Elon Musk such a trash predictor?

Because he’s not saying things because he thinks they’re true, he’s saying things to make them true’.

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. (category design, worldview)

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.

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

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”.

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.

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