Elon Musk discusses his fearlessness in pursuing ideas, acknowledging that he does feel fear but believes in the importance of his endeavors. He suggests that accepting the probabilities and being somewhat fatalistic can help diminish fear. He mentions starting SpaceX and Tesla, acknowledging the low odds of success but still believing in making progress and doing good.

Sam Altman asked Elon Musk how he gets the internal strength to overcome naysayers and internal fear.

This is a clip from a longer interview, which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBQmEqBCY0

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 
00:00 - Making a decision when others says its a crazy idea
00:54 - Feel fear but let the importance of it drive
01:02 - Accept the probabilities

1 thing I really like about you is you are unusually fearless and willing to go in the face of other people telling you something that's crazy.

And I know a lot of pretty crazy people, you still stand out.

Where does that come from or how do you think about making a decision when everyone tells you this is a crazy idea?

Or where do you get the internal strength to do that?

Well, first of all, I'd say I actually think I feel fear quite strongly.

So it's not as though I just have the absence of fear.

But there are times when something is important enough, you believe in it enough, that you do it in spite of fear.

People shouldn't think, well, I feel fear about this, and therefore I shouldn't do it.

Like you'd have to do something mentally wrong if you didn't feel fear.

So you just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway?

You know, actually something that can be helpful is fatalism to some degree.

If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear.

So when starting SpaceX, I thought the odds of success were less than 10%.

And I just accepted that actually probably I would just lose lose everything But that maybe would make some progress if we could just move the ball forward even if we died maybe Some other company could pick up the baton and move and keep moving it forward so that we'll still do some good.

I thought the odds of a car company succeeding were extremely low.


Speaker 0: 1 thing I really like about you is you are unusually fearless and willing to go in the face of other people telling you something that's crazy. And I know a lot of pretty crazy people, you still stand out. Where does that come from or how do you think about making a decision when everyone tells you this is a crazy idea? Or where do you get the internal strength to do that?

Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I'd say I actually think I feel fear quite strongly. So it's not as though I just have the absence of fear. I feel it quite strongly. But there are times when something is important enough, you believe in it enough, that you do it in spite of fear.

Speaker 0: So speaking of important things.

Speaker 1: People shouldn't think, well, I feel fear about this, and therefore I shouldn't do it. It's normal to feel fear. Like you'd have to do something mentally wrong if you didn't feel fear.

Speaker 0: So you just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway?

Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, actually something that can be helpful is fatalism to some degree. If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear. So when starting SpaceX, I thought the odds of success were less than 10%. And I just accepted that actually probably I would just lose lose everything But that maybe would make some progress if we could just move the ball forward even if we died maybe Some other company could pick up the baton and move and keep moving it forward so that we'll still do some good.

Yeah, same with Tesla. I thought the odds of a car company succeeding were extremely low.

Speaker 0: You

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Elon Musk On Fear