I’ve had similar thoughts. As much as I’ve tried, I can’t fully imagine the unlimited wealth these people have and what it does to your brain.

It’s all deeply weird, and films like the Mountainhead increasingly seem like they might be more accurate than not.

There’s just clearly some limit around accumulated wealth where it detaches people further and further from reality.

If I had that much wealth I would be starting gigantic libraries like Carnegie once did.

I think I’d pay people to tell me my ideas were whacky and not to share them.

I suppose the kind of character traits that enable becoming super-rich probably also lend themselves to giving such talks.

Most sane people would stop working by the time they become rich, not super rich. To become a billionaire, your brain must be wired differently, and perhaps with unwavering conviction that you are right, righter than anyone else and the world owes you its attention.

TED is a venue for middlebrow ideas by middlebrows for other middlebrows.

Same with symposia and fora with “distinguished guests” like the Dalai Lama, or Kissinger or one of the Clintons or many other officials.

They do a circuit, often have someone prepare note for them where they rarely challenge prevailing thought among the attendees and come out of it with a lot of money.

There will be some nuggets once in a while but there is rarely any groundbreaking insight like when physicists and mathematicians in the XXth century brought new ideas, challenged old ideas and often suffered indignity for some time before they were vindicated.

One might say that Elon's acquisition of Twitter is the ultimate manifestation of this.