Never before could talent shine as much as in the Age of Information. Through the internet one can learn almost everything and one can also destroy oneself completely. Many great minds rise and fall in this new environment. Yet there is still something different about Elon when compared to others who share his intellectual prowess. What some call a lack of fear might be the exact opposite. I’m not sure if my hypothesis is right so hear me out and give me your best criticism.

Elon Musk’s early childhood that was "excruciating". Permanent damage to his nose from early beatings was only discovered and fixed much later. I suspect this ingredient is underestimated because so few intelligent people grow up brutally anymore. Our survival in modern civilization is almost guaranteed and violent crime has never been lower from a historic perspective.

Elon says his father committed every crime in the book. There are multiple ingredients though, an obsessive nature seems crucial as well. Some people have a harder time forgetting painful memories or possibilities than others. What happens if you let a hyper-sensitive genius experience sheer terror early on in childhood? I think that you create someone that is fundamentally more afraid than most of us can imagine for the rest of the person's life.

Around puberty his great fear was yet more nuisance than strength but that started to change after he read Asimov. Isaac thought deeply about what the future may hold and he presented his ideas in a science-fiction setting. Compared to the world we live in today, I seriously doubt anyone predicted more things correctly in his time.

Asimov suggested that we should try to minimize the probability of terrible outcomes for humanity in our lifetimes, this struck a deep chord with the young entrepreneur.

Elon must have decided, at least subconsciously, that he will spend as much personal energy as possible on making his fear go away. To spare mankind he must extinguish real danger to the best of his abilities. The terrible unguided force of a feeling found refuge in a clear path to avoid the terrible pain that he subconsciously felt coming.

The fear he experienced as a child never truly left him, it only changed form into a hammer that will make ripples that touch almost all humans on earth today. But as soon as he loses sight of danger the form changes back into a whip and it is still hurting him today.

Elon is not fearless, we have never experienced real fear. Elon is not an alien, his childhood was a lot more homo sapiens than ours.

The only thing that can make this man relax is the survival of mankind. Without fear of danger engraved deep in our neurons we have become impotent and our degeneration will know no bounds.

The beatings of children will hopefully not be necessary anymore because we can find solutions to all problems. If we notice the problem of course, but are we already too late?

The greatest tide of danger is rising right now. Not even apocalyptic meteors, supervolcanos or most nuclear wars we could accidentally trigger today can wipe all of us out. AI can, and most likely it will. We fear the distant Superintelligence because our brain recognizes it as the return of the dangerous predator that has haunted us in our past but the most dangerous predator on earth is human.

"Narrow"-AI very much still wielded with our inadequate emotions in a few key weapons technologies (eg drones, bioweapons) could easily cause damage we can not even imagine anymore.

AI generated text starts looking more human than some human writing. Narrow-AI surpasses us in field after field, plays chess and Go like a God but we are not nervous. Elon is so nervous because he is in the vast minority of humans that can still feel real fear. Our prosperity has opened up a blind spot in our psyche and it is growing still.

Without danger our talent and genius flushes itself down the toilet by the millions and we happily consume their achievements. This is natural and I can not blame a single soul for their choices, for my failures vastly outnumber my achievements. This eternal process contributed to the fall of many great empires in the past. We must not share their fate!

We belittle and laugh at Greta Thunberg because we are arrogant in our fearlessness.

Climate Change doesn't even fit into the dangerous predator bucket our brain loves to reuse so much. She did not suffer like Elon for the hidden talent of real fear but she was also young when she acquired it. Her obsessive nature could not ignore the suffering we were clearly causing.

Perhaps in some great humans there is really a broken child pulling the strings.

We don't have to break them with our fists anymore out of evolved ignorance. We only have to be very honest with them about the things that can actually hurt us. They can feel the fear much stronger than we can as adults and we have gravely underestimated their talent.

Notes It’s hard to judge how important a period of life is when we remember none of it. We can only ask our parents what we shared with them. Perhaps this first consciousness is just as real as the one we grow into next? It is however absolutely certain that our ability to learn new beliefs and importantly also abandon and forget them rapidly degrades as we age.

The most driven and most successful people in my family had the most terrible childhoods. These deeds are so terrible that I am not surprised we never considered value to be hidden in the principle behind them.

My grandfather was an outstanding student, ruthless in his pursuit as an engineer but his resolve to beat his children as his father had done to him virtually evaporated. Had my mother treated me like she was treated would I have been more successful? Which type of children break completely under the pressure? What is the right pressure?

The four fundamental drives of every animal are fighting, fleeing, feeding and fornicating. We hide the real fear from our children for as long as possible and now we pay dearly for the consequences.

Please judge my words harshly I don’t even want to be right.