How Elon Musk May Be A Sociopath

This question originally appeared on Quora. Answer by Alik Griffin.

He is possibly a “high-functioning sociopath” from stories I’ve heard from people that have worked with him as well as looking at his business practices.

Not all sociopaths or psychopaths are violent, cruel or evil. And like with many mental disorders, there is no clear boundary. This illness means you lack empathy, don’t feel remorse or guilt and aren’t able to form real emotional attachments with others. Of course, in a varying degree. Everyone likely has met, or knows a sociopath or two.

It’s a very common behavior with successful business owners, bankers, and it would seem film directors. Psychopaths often hold normal jobs, can have families and are often seen as being charming or trustworthy.

The reasons I would think Musk is a high-functioning psychopath, or sociopath is because he seems rather delusional with the concept of the Hyperloop, which is an engineering impossibility, as well as his desire to colonize mars. He’s also frequently firing employees to the point where they go to Apple and the employees there refer to Apple as the “Tesla Graveyard.” This impulsive firing of employees would suggest he is a sociopath as sociopaths are often very impulsive.

Musk is also often caught lying about firing employees, as well as lying to investors about the engineering possibilities and deadlines. Not to mention he got to be the CEO of Tesla by getting the founder and former CEO (Martin Eberhard) fired, where he then took his job. Eberhard was later quoted saying - Musk "is the kind of boss where day to day you don't know if you have a job or not.”

Sounds pretty much like a classic sociopath. Maybe psychopath, although I believe psychopaths are a bit less impulsive. I would even go as far as saying Musk doesn’t even care about the environment, but uses this trend to gain power and fame. Of course, we all fall for it and praise him for being so amazing.

But if you think about it, on one hand he has an eco friendly car company that’s suppose to be great for the environment, on the other hand he has Space X, a black soot carbon generating space rocket company that’s extremely hazardous to the environment, especially the ozone.