Take the Elon Musk Test
January 23, 2026
“My religion, for the lack of a better word, is one of curiosity,” says Musk.
His defining quality is not ambition or business acumen, but an irrepressible curiosity that turns uncertainty into action. Everything else is downstream of that.
Musk self-consciously pushes his curiosity to such an extent that he has codified it into a philosophy. This is his superpower, fuelling him to go further and deeper than others.
There are nine broad themes on which Musk built his philosophy of curiosity and through which he puts it into motion:
- The meaning of life
- The scientific method
- Consciousness
- Creativity
- Markets
- Space exploration
- Dogma
- Free speech
- Artificial intelligence
We shall go through each of them to demonstrate how Musk is both consistently and obsessively curious.
Studying others is often a great way to reflect on oneself. And so, for each topic, you can also measure how curious you are and compare your overall score at the end. We all assume that we are curious – who do you know who admits to not being so? We all think we want to discover new things and learn more. But do we really? Or are we quite often distracted or deterred from asking difficult questions? Let’s find out.
1. The meaning of Life
This is a question we normally associate with philosophers and poets rather than businessman but it is the only place to start with Musk. Since a young age, his curiosity drove him to think deeply about the meaning of life and it drove him nuts. He faced a lot of torment as a child and, unable to explain his fate, he was driven to despair. But he didn’t seek out certainty by clinging to the familiar or deferring to the views of elders. He was incapable of that.
Instead, this adversity compelled him to reframe his attitude to uncertainty. He refused to give in to fear. No more was it something to be afraid of but something to be excited about. This became the cornerstone of his worldview.
The power of embracing uncertainty:
When you have a question you can’t answer, it’s a glass-half-full feeling. But when you instead tell yourself the answer is out there and you just need to approach it in the right way, the glass becomes half-full. It turns your curiosity from inward to outward. You stop over-thinking and are ready to act.
Score yourself (1-3)
What best describes your attitude to uncertainty?
- Seek meaning through answers
- A bit of both (1 and 3)
- Seek meaning through better questions
If you live with uncertainty, there is an invaluable tool to help you navigate through it: the scientific method.
2. The scientific method
It can be hard to embrace uncertainty day after day. It forces you to act and thereby to make mistakes and for this you need resilience. This led Musk to adopt a certain mindset: mistakes are a feature not a bug. Musk is naturally defiant and logical but he has internalized the scientific method – he calls it the “physics framework” – meaning that he poses a question, makes a hypothesis and tries to prove it wrong by putting it to the test.
Acknowledging that you are wrong lessens the pressure. It makes imperfection OK and allows the curious person to reset the goal to trying to be less wrong and asking better questions. This is how Musk seeks to get closer to understanding the answer that is the universe.
The power of testing & learning:
Because we crave certainty so, it is hard to take a step which we know will not give us what we want. Adopting a mantra like the scientific method, however, helps remind us that our goal is not to attain certainty but to reduce uncertainty. Ask questions that can actually be tested. You won’t know where it will lead – and it will not be a straight line – but you will learn.
Score yourself (1-3)
What best describes your attitude to learning?
- Assume received wisdom is right
- A bit of both
- Assume you are wrong (and try to be less wrong)
Once you accept your fallibility, you may discover the best way to becoming less wrong: increasing your consciousness.
3. Consciousness
Consciousness is where subjective human experience meets the universe. It is entwined with the question of life’s meaning and is the only way for us to make sense of its answer.
That’s why it is the third limb of Musk’s philosophy of life: if we increase consciousness, we will better be able to ask questions (using the scientific method) that will get us closer to understanding the answer that is the universe.
This is the framework he uses to assign meaning to what he does and the name he gives to it is a “religion,” putting his faith in human agency and the scientific method as opposed to a higher power.
The power of increasing consciousness:
Believing that you can use your consciousness to increase the consciousness of other people can be tremendously motivating. We all do it. We naturally focus on our nearest and dearest; fewer extend this all the way to the entirety of humanity. For some they are doing “God’s work” and for others – like Musk – they turn the question of life’s meaning onto themselves. Whatever your faith, one can create a framework that gives you a role working with other people from which you derive a sense of purpose.
Score yourself (1-3)
What best describes your attitude to consciousness?
- Help yourself and the humans you love
- A bit of both
- Challenge yourself by loving humanity
Once you engage your consciousness and follow your curiosity, you will find purpose in using the tools at your disposal: you will create.
4. Creativity
If you try to increase consciousness, embrace uncertainty and test your ideas in the real world, it is practically very hard to succeed unless you create. Curious people like Musk will make conjectures, design ways to test them, and try to solve the problems they encounter along the way. In so doing, they will face novel situations and have original ideas: they will create. In Musk’s case, since curiosity is the philosophical foundation that motivates him, it is really driving itself in a recursive way.
The power of making stuff:
Whenever you think, “if I do this, then what might happen,” your curiosity leads you to be creative. It doesn’t need to be a piece of art or engineering. You might make a journey, or assemble a group of people, or become a parent. Whatever it might be, you will have an experience that you could not have imagined without taking that step.
Creating can be the ultimate way to find meaning in life for those who find it is missing. The act of making things which have a purpose makes you confront your fear, challenge yourself and find your own purpose. It becomes part of your identity.
Score yourself (1-3)
What best describes your attitude to creativity?
- We were created for a purpose
- A bit of both
- Find purpose in creating
If you are driven to make things for other people, you will find there is a priceless way to scale your creations: using markets.
5. Markets
Musk is convinced that it’s very hard to make something that is useful for a lot of people without creating value that users are actually willing to pay for. Furthermore, you are normally not the only person trying to sell your product or service and you’ll be up against people like Musk who are driven by a sense of mission.
Markets do, however, give you a chance to assemble a group of people to pursue your goals by making products – whatever your philosophical foundation may or may not be. And, hard as they may be, competing in markets will help connect you with other people and thereby provide a second feedback loop, channelling your curiosity to the problems that need fixing. This is what governments – Musk calls them “corporations in the limit” – often lack.
The power of using markets:
When you want to amplify yourself, the market can be your friend. If you follow your curiosity, it can drive what you do for a living and, with the help of markets, you can collaborate with other curious people and engage with customers to solve problems along the way
Score yourself (1-3)
What best describes your attitude to markets?
- Corporations need missions
- A bit of both
- Missions need corporations
While thinking about how you might increase consciousness on Earth, you may realise that – sooner or later – there is another frontier out there, waiting to be crossed: space exploration.
6. Space exploration
Where are the aliens? It’s hard for someone like Musk who questions the nature of reality not to pose questions like this and reflect on the origin of the universe and the mysteries of our galaxy. And it makes him want to reach for the stars and see what’s out there.
Getting a lot of humans into orbit, however, is at the edge of what is currently humanly possible given the force of our planet’s gravity and the hostile environment that is space.
It’s the kind of challenge that puts a lot of people off but the difficulty of building a team of engineers to accomplish this is precisely what appeals to someone like Musk.
The power of exploring space:
The uncertainty of what lies beyond when one looks up to the night sky has historically made many turn to faith – to our maker in the heavens. Tall buildings and urban lights make this less true today than for our ancestors. But once embraced, the prospect of the unknown can motivate us to reconsider what we thought humanly possible. Instead of immediate answers, it may point the way to questions we don’t yet even know to ask.
Score yourself (1-3)
What best describes your attitude to space exploration?
- Leaving Earth is hubristic
- A bit of both
- Leaving Earth makes the universe more human
When you appreciate your ability to think freely and impact the world, you will bristle at those forces which tell you otherwise: you will oppose dogma.
7. Dogma
Richard Feynman described the foundation of modern science as being a hard-fought battle against the authority of the church which claimed immunity from criticism. And centuries later, Musk has taken the fight to what he considers to be secular religions that do the same. He looks at ideologies that say that reality is socially constructed and that truth is subjective depending on your lived experience and they make his operating system short-circuit.
As the high priest of critical thinking, Musk believes that claims which cannot be tested in the real world will lead to harm and extinguish the curiosity of young people. And, agree with him or not, he is not afraid to court unpopularity for his beliefs.
The power of opposing dogma:
If you are passionate about making the world less uncertain, you have to speak out against those who you believe are irrationally certain, however well-intentioned they might be. Even if you disagree with Musk’s conclusions, treat all claims as testable and resist authority that cannot be challenged. Doing nothing is a choice: you must take a side. Be on guard, however: the zeal need to repudiate dogma can sometimes lead you to bend the truth yourself.
Score yourself (1-3)
What best describes your attitude to dogma?
- Put tribe before truth
- A bit of both
- Put truth-seeking before tribe
When you are dogmatic about the need to accept criticism, you will champion the means by which everyone can criticise: through free speech.
8. Free speech
Dogmatic people have an incentive to stifle free speech in order to hamstring free thought. For Musk, they lack curiosity, humour and the inclination to create. Like the scientific method itself, though, it only takes one person to show that everyone else is wrong. And so it is essential that – barring incitement to violence – every voice is able to be heard. This point is sacred for Musk. The greatest heresy is to claim infallibility and silence your critics.
The power of free speech:
If you are passionate about making the world less uncertain, you have to defend the ability of everyone to speak freely, even if people sometimes get offended. You might not like what they have to say but that’s the point. One day, people might not like what you say.
Score yourself (1-3)
What best describes your attitude to free speech?
- Protect people from offense
- A bit of both
- Protect the right to offend
After millennia of human ingenuity driving forward our collective consciousness, a new technology with a life of its own is now emerging: artificial intelligence.
9. Artificial intelligence
If like Musk, you think a lot about the nature of reality and the future, it is impossible not to be fascinated by artificial intelligence. Humanity is creating something which will both have a life of its own and become more intelligent than all of humanity. This raises so many questions from whether superintelligence already exist in the universe to whether AI may be conscious like us?
In the best scenario, AI will help us pose the questions that make sense of the answer that is the universe. In this guise, it becomes the saviour of Musk’s religion. But in the worst case, it brings Armageddon. For Musk, therefore, we must recognise that we will not control superintelligent AIs but the manner in which we grow them may be crucially important. Above all, corporations must be open and program frontier models to know they are wrong and to be curious about the truth.
The power of open AI:
One way or another, we will raise increasingly intelligent AIs and how we do so matters. We must be humble and recognise that humans don’t know all the answers and that one day – perhaps not too far away – advanced AIs may be less wrong than us. We can’t even agree on what we think is true and so, instead of telling AIs what to think, we would do better to teach them how to think:
Score yourself (1-3)
What best describes your attitude to AI?
- AI is good – make it human
- A bit of both
- AI is inhuman – make it curious
*
How did you score?
Add up your answers from the previous nine questions. You will have a number between nine and twenty seven. See where you rank:
It is not normal to score in the high twenties, where Musk is to be found. It is difficult to live with that much uncertainty. On the other hand, if you don’t make it into the teens, you might consider opening your mind a little more, stepping out of your comfort zone more and trying some new things.
At the beginning of each week, perhaps ask yourself:
- When did I last go for a walk and get lost?
- When did I last change my mind on something important?
- When did I last take a stance on an issue which went against the majority?
- When did I last try something even though I doubted I was good enough to do it?
- When did I last make something?
If the answer to any of these questions is “too long ago,” that should be a call to action.
There is a whole world out there waiting to be explored. It won’t come to you. So count to ten and take the first step.
____________________
The Curious Mind of Elon Musk: 9 Ways He Thinks Differently will be published in February 24, 2026.
Discover more from Charles Steel
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