# Scale 1: Excitable

- **Episode:** [14](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/14.md) (2022-11-29)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** hds, excitable, emotional
- **Time:** 26:25–32:30 (start 1585s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/14?t=1585](https://truthliesandwork.com/14?t=1585)

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[26:25] Sandy McKenzie: First of all, we're looking at a scale called excitable. It's looking at the individual's emotional control, particularly in moments where they get excited about projects and people. It's about being enthusiastic, in essence, when it's kind of been kept at a sort of a mid-range about people and projects. With Elon, inevitably, we're talking about somebody who's off the chart, 100
[26:54] Al Elliott: Yeah
[26:55] Sandy McKenzie: In terms of his scale. So this is somebody who invests huge amounts of energy and enthusiasm into anything that he's doing, ventures, Tesla, even with Twitter now and others. It's a real all-or-nothing approach. And the derailer is that whilst you could be incredibly positive in one moment, you can very quickly become very disappointed in people and projects on the other. And, you know, the volatility and unpredictability that you can see in that is going to be somebody who is, on the one hand, driving positively somebody who, let's say, is in charge of one of his Tesla projects. And then a week later, he's decided to fire them. You know, the statistics are indicating that the project was sort of behind behind time or something like that. And he's just lent into that sort of energy score, which people feed off, and suddenly it becomes volatility and crash, bang, sharp decision, get rid, start again, let's get somebody new in, complete disappointment or failure. And you see it a lot in entrepreneurs as well, where they start, fail, start, fail, start, fail, until eventually something lands and is the big sort of dream thing that they sell or whatever that they do with it. So, It's quite a common trait that you will tend to see in neurodiverse people, but also in entrepreneurs. Skeptical is the second. It's to do with social insightfulness, the surroundings that you're seeing. Other people might call it wisdom, for example, but it's really sort of being able to read the social cues and situation around you. And I think this is probably an area linked to the Asperger's diagnosis and also what you mentioned earlier about just being black and white. You know, he clearly has a problem with seeing and understanding social cues. I think he's aware of it, and he's obviously read a lot, and he's tried to work on it, you know, through his childhood and teenage years and even up to now. But, you know, that's something which isn't going away, and it's probably something which is a major challenge for him. So I've scored him very low. on this because, you know, what we're saying is, is that he doesn't have that social insightfulness. He doesn't have that ability to, to kind of see what's going on around him. Uh, in a media analysis, we would be picking that up and sort of saying, look, a development area here is you need to read the room a little bit more, or you need to try and work out how to engage and understand people's intentions and be a bit more insightful. And, you know, in terms of how you're perceiving and picking up situations around you
[29:35] Al Elliott: Just a quick one. Sandy mentioned neurodiversity. Now I know that that seems to be— I've seen a lot more articles about that in the last couple of years than I ever did before. I'm not 100% sure I understand exactly what neurodiversity is. What do psychologists define it as?
[29:50] Leanne Elliott: So you're right, neurodiversity is brilliantly being talked about a lot more, but neurodiversity is basically a word that is used to explain the unique ways that people's brains work, right? So everyone's brain will develop similarly, but no 2 brains function the same. We even see that, you know, in identical twins, they don't function exactly the same. Being neurodivergent means that you have a brain that works differently from the average or neurotypical person. So for example, perceptual reasoning, verbal reasoning, processing speed, working memory, people who are neurodiverse operate literally and figuratively on a different level, you know, on this potentially genius level within these particular ways of thinking. Um, it's what, 15 to 20% of the population, um, are neurodiverse. Um, and it can include any condition that affects some but not all thinking skills. So commonly, uh, dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADD, ADHD, ADHD, autism, and Asperger's are all examples of neurodiversity. It was actually in May last year, May 2021, Elon Musk was on Saturday Night Live and actually shared that he has Asperger's syndrome. Asperger's is basically a form of autism, but what distinguishes it and why it's classed as its own separate syndrome is that people with Asperger's typically have very strong language skills and very strong intellectual ability, usually very high IQ. So yeah, it's associated in terms of behaviours with very, very good focus, lots of persistence, an incredible aptitude for recognising patterns, and also having a high attention to detail. As I mentioned, neurodiversity does come with unique challenges as well. For somebody with Asperger's, they can have difficulty with social interactions. They may have more restricted interests and just find it difficult, you know, that give and take of a conversation. But yeah, I mean, I think the best person to sum up is Elon himself. He actually said of his Asperger's, to quote, I know sometimes I say or post strange things, but that's just how my brain works. To anyone who's been offended, I just want to say I reinvented electric cars, I'm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was going to be a chill, normal dude?
[32:18] Al Elliott: Love it, love it. So now we know much more about interpreting the results of the HDS. Um, let's go back to Sandy and find out how Elon's environment might have influenced his behavior