Tenth, remember how Trump admitted he deliberately downplayed the coronavirus threat—even though he knew doing so would kill people—because he didn't want people to be unhappy.

Elon Musk likewise is willing to lie about our situation because he thinks downbeat people struggle to develop a fan base.

Ninth, Musk is temperamentally arrogant, impatient, antisocial, distrusting and tunnel-visioned; ideologically, he's a eugenicist, an isolato and a willful iconoclast. This means that he simply _categorically refuses_ to seek input from folks who know infinitely more than he does on a given subject.

Eighth, Musk is—as a matter of biographical fact, not conjecture—extremely poorly educated. Besides being media illiterate, his skillset and knowledge base in any area connected to the liberal arts is essentially zero. That includes History. Some part of him may actually _believe_ his own nonsense.

Seventh, Musk is aware that his "brand" is what gives him geopolitical power, business success, and the attention of media. And his brand is Talking About Big Ideas. As a con man, he's aware that those ideas don't have to be good or safe or useful. They simply have to be loud and attention-grabbing.

Sixth, he's aware his audience is largely American, white, male, and far-right. We also know that he believes in the antisemitic, racist Great Replacement Theory.

So a big part of his desire for a population explosion is actually a localized scheme to get far-right domestic extremists to procreate.

...that have the effect of making him seem like someone concerned with the future of the species, even if he's done none of the hard work of speaking with experts who could inform him about what is endangering our world.

Instead of being on Twitter all day, he should be talking with Jesse Damiani.