Steve Jobs
Article
Steve Jobs is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 7 times across 7 issues between November 28, 2021 and January 16, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “Steve Jobs is the biological brother (adopted and raised apart) of award-winning novelist Mona Simpson”; “Who “won” the computer “race”? … Steve Jobs?”; “Like Steve Jobs before him, Musk is able to think up things that consumers did not even know they wanted”. It most often appears alongside America, Bill Gates, China.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 7
- Issue count: 7
- First seen: November 28, 2021
- Last seen: January 16, 2026
Appears In
- Open Thread 200
- Most Technologies Aren’t Races
- Book Review: Elon Musk
- Altruism And Vitalism As Fellow Travelers
- My Takeaways From AI 2027
- Your Review: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been
- The Dilbert Afterlife
Related Pages
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- America (3 shared issues)
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- Bill Gates (3 shared issues)
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- China (3 shared issues)
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- Elon Musk (3 shared issues)
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- Japan (3 shared issues)
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- Tesla (3 shared issues)
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- AI (2 shared issues)
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- Bell Labs (2 shared issues)
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- Biden (2 shared issues)
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- Detroit (2 shared issues)
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- Einstein (2 shared issues)
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- Internet (2 shared issues)
External Links
None.
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
2: Commenters brought up even more examples of interesting families last week. For example, neuroscientist Oliver Sacks, Yes, Minister co-creator Jonathan Lynn, Israeli deputy PM Abba Eban, and econ Nobelist Robert Aumann are all cousins. Steve Jobs is the biological brother (adopted and raised apart) of award-winning novelist Mona Simpson, and their cousins (raised apart in Syria, never met) are famous pianist Malek Jandali and journalist Bassma Al-Jandaly. Paleogenetics founder Svante Paabo is the illegitimate son (raised apart) of Nobel-winning biochemist Sune Bergstrom. Add him alongside Bobby Fisher to the pile of illegitimate children raised apart from their talented parents who still become talented, I guess.
Inline links: Oliver Sacks, Jonathan Lynn, Abba Eban, Robert Aumann, Mona Simpson, Malek Jandali, Bassma Al-Jandaly, Svante Paabo, Sune Bergstrom
Who “won” the computer “race”? Charles Babbage? Alan Turing? John von Neumann? Steve Jobs? Bill Gates? Again, it was a long path of incremental improvements. Jobs and Gates got rich, and their hometowns are big tech hubs, but other people have gotten even richer, and the world chip manufacturing center is in Taiwan now for some reason. The overall balance of power didn’t change (except maybe during a brief window when the Bombes broke Enigma) and today all developed countries have computers.
The truth is that there might be some of that going on with Musk, and he’s turned it into an advantage. He’s very visual and can store things that others have deemed to look good away in his brain for recall at any time. This process has helped Musk develop a good eye, which he’s combined with his own sensibilities, while also refining his ability to put what he wants into words. The result is a confident, assertive perspective that does resonate with the tastes of consumers. Like Steve Jobs before him, Musk is able to think up things that consumers did not even know they wanted—the door handles, the giant touch-screen—and to envision a shared point of view for all of Tesla’s products and services. “Elon holds Tesla up as a product company,” von Holzhausen said. “He’s passionate that you have to get the product right. I have to deliver for him and make sure it’s beautiful and attractive.”
An obvious counterexample to this is all the extremely successful people from privileged upbringings. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg all had great childhoods. So did Caesar and Napoleon. So did Einstein and von Neumann. Meanwhile, there are millions of poor people and war victims who have lived lives of constant horrible trauma without much benefit. If success and creativity were proportional to suffering, the West would have to ban refugees from the Gaza Strip, lest they take all the spots in the best colleges and form an elite billionaire overclass.
If persuasion “only” tops out at the level of top humans, this is still impressive; the top humans are very persuasive! They range from charismatic charmers (Bill Clinton) to strategic masterminds (Dominic Cummings) to Machiavellian statesmen (Otto von Bismarck) to inspirational-yet-culty gurus (Steve Jobs) to beloved celebrities (Taylor Swift). At the very least, a superintelligence can combine all of these skills.
We worry that people will round this off to something impossible (god-like ability to hypnotize everyone into doing their will instantly), then dismiss it - whereas it might just be another step (or two, or three) along the line from you → the coolest kid in your high school friend group → a really good salesman → Steve Jobs. Or if you wouldn’t have fallen for Steve Jobs, someone you would have fallen for. Your favorite influencer. Your favorite writer. “Oh, but I only like my favorite writer because she’s so smart, and thinks so clearly”. Don’t worry, if you’re not fooled by the slick-hair and white-teeth kind of charisma, there’ll be something for you too.
Xanadu had a huge head start. Ted Nelson coined the term “hypertext.” He was doing all of this way before anyone else. He had a mind for design, he was smart, he was charismatic. Why didn’t he become the Steve Jobs of the Web?
It’s on Youtube; I think you should watch it. When I was younger, my dad had me watch Steve Jobs’ iPhone presentation; held it up as a prime example of tech and sales, innovation and elegance all rolled up. I liked it at the time. Now, having watched Engelbart’s presentation, I recognize it for what it is: patronizing, mass-market garbage. It’s just nowhere near as cool.
Inline links: It’s on Youtube
Throughout this piece, I’ve tried to emphasize that Adams was usually pretty self-aware. Did that include the hypnosis stuff? I’m not sure. I think he would have answered: certainly some people are great charismatic manipulators. Either their skills are magic, or they operate by some physical law. If they operate by physical law, they should be learnable. Maybe I’m not quite Steve Jobs level yet, but I have to be somewhere along the path to becoming Steve Jobs, right? And why not describe it in impressive terms? Steve Jobs would have come up with impressive-sounding terms for any skills he had, and you would have believed him!