Comment by asim
2 years ago
Unfortunately for those who idolised Elon, their world view is beginning to crumble. His actions are not justifiable. The way he treats people, the way he rules his companies, the way he governs his new "free speech" platform. The man is a tyrant. He's idolised for the things he's achieved but if he had not achieved them would he be given the same benefit of the doubt?
Hypocrisy. The way people treat this man versus others who act the same, it's two faced. The who's who of silicon valley were championing him right up until a few hours ago. Everything that he says or does that is deplorable, people eat up. But I guess if he's "changing the world" he should get to be a dick right?
Imagine if it were Tim Cook who called Vern Unsworth, the British diver who helped rescue the trapped Thai kids in the flooded cave, a "pedo guy". Or, if you want to picture an amazing shitstorm, Barack Obama.
That whole Thai situation was when my opinion of Elon cratered. The pedo insult and subsequent lawsuits really gave insight into Elon's (lack of) character - the fact he would use that as an insult, the person he insulted, and the fact he wouldn't apologise and let it get to the stage of a lawsuit.
Whilst the 'submarine solution' he proposed shattered my belief that he was some engineering genius. It was plainly obvious to even a non-technical person that a cave system was not going to be suitable for a submarine - yet here was the 'genius' designing a solution without even checking the requirements. It was so fundamentally stupid that it's made me really believe that Tesla/SpaceX are a (technical) success in spite of Elon, not because.
Maybe the whole submarine thing was purely a marketing/publicity plot ... but trying to gain PR points off a live tragedy? Well that goes back to my point about his character.
Or the easier explanation, that Elon has changed. He was my favorite billionaire back when all his prospects related to colonization of Mars and all his investments were aimed at creating new technology. But power can corrupt people, and he seems particularly prone to it. The entire Twitter episode is at odds with everything he did 10 years ago; Mars doesn't need a social network, and he's not innovating anything here. Not to mention that part where he's spent the last 7+ years sleeping around and fathering as many children as possible.
A different way of looking at "power corrupts" is that negative social interactions are an important part of the feedback loop that calibrates a person's sense of right and wrong. When a person decides that they don't want to hear conflicting opinions, they loose out on accurate feedback, and de-calibrate, unless they have a strong internal sense of empathy. Empathy is a disadvantage to becoming a billionaire in the first place, so very few of them have much of it. Guys like Musk and Bezos and Trump end up victims of their own success and echo chamber.
he basically just bought twitter because he wanted to ban people from making fun of him, every decision he makes is completely personally motivated and has absolutely no bearing on making the website better or reflecting the will of its users at all
And that's exactly my point, that his new decisions seem petty and self-centered, where his old decisions (sinking his significant wealth into risky car and rocket companies and sleeping in the factory instead of buying a Caribbean island and living out his years in paradise) seemed to be more about lofty goals and ambition. Something changed. $40B could have done sooo much more for his previous ambitions; it's a crime to see it wasted like this. If he starts gold-plating his toilets, we'll know he's really gone forever. Thank goodness he wasn't born in the USA.
We saw this writ large with the evangelical support for Donald Trump. It's crystal clear that DT is a huge "family values" hypocrite, yet he's seen to be a global change agent (of God, no less), so that justifies their uncritical support.
It's no different with Musk. His work with SpaceX and Tesla are seen as worthy goals at the whole-of-humanity scale, so that justifies (in some people's eyes) glossing over any character defects.
It was similar with Steve Jobs, a reputed workplace bully and tyrant.
The worldview of people who like Musk, Trump, etc., will never crumble. It is built on a religious belief in contrarianism, as well as moral autism.
Techies are very susceptible to the cult of personality. How many times do we have to watch that play out?
As opposed to which group of people who are more immune to it?
We are the ones extracting all the surplus money from society, so it is more important for us to stay good than for a random person to stay good.
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