Comment by theshrike79

3 months ago

And the worst thing is that Elon could've been a living legend by building/funding colleges and schools focused on the tech his companies need, software development, robotics etc. Or even given out million dollar scholarships for the very top students.

And he still would've been worth over 250 billion easily.

Instead he chose to buy the president and start "optimising" the government with AI.

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theshrike79

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mapt  3 months ago

There's a question about his actual goals in government.

He's an ambitious person. And AI enables a degree of surveillance state that we find it difficult to even begin to imagine. All the logistical difficulties of something like Orwell's 1984, of the Stasi having 1/3 of Berlin on the books as informants against the other 2/3, go away completely. We have more cameras than ever. Every person gets to enjoy the kind of focus that went into tracking down Luigi. DOGE has exfiltrated all our sensitive databases to servers that they control; Every 'Chinese Wall' intended to ensure some kind of separation of concerns has been broken down, almost certainly including various formally classified intelligence-gathering campaigns. You can't necessarily stuff that genie back in the bottle. If somebody wanted to be... not president, but authoritarian leader of a post-democracy, Musk would be well positioned technologically.

It wouldn't be inconceivable to set up an AI to do all the same sort of fraud & identity theft attacks against an individual that for-profit blackhats do, or that a Kiwifarms harassment campaign can do, without much of any actual staffing. Only DOGE starts out with your social security number, your tax records, your drivers' license, license plate reader records, web history, everything. That individual could be a Wall Street Journal editor who wrote something Musk dislikes, or ten thousand Redditors who are making fun of Teslas.

  • tessierashpool  3 months ago

    If somebody wanted to be... not president, but authoritarian leader of a post-democracy, Musk would be well positioned technologically.

    of course, that was his very explicit goal. Thiel backed Curtis Yarvin, who came up for the plan for this and called it RAGE. google it, it's all written down. they hoped to put in Bezos or Zuckerberg and have a more efficiently-run dictatorship replacing our democracy. because they didn't understand politics, they got the ketamine addict instead, who renamed RAGE to DOGE so he could also use it to power a crypto pump-and-dump.

    *edit: and because it was never a realistic plan. because they didn't understand politics

motorest  3 months ago

> And the worst thing is that Elon could've been a living legend by building/funding colleges and schools focused on the tech his companies need, software development, robotics etc.

Could he, though?

I mean, he might have the cash, but if you look at his history you don't see that much interest or respect for basic academic principles, or even any basic academic achievement whatsoever.

He conveys an image of someone who is mentally trapped in prepubescence, and who repeatedly does things that a prepubescent kid does to try to gather admiration. I meant who desperately tries to pass themselves off as elite gamers? How long will it take until he moves on to DJing? That's not someone who has any interest in founding education institutions.

The man does have an army of terminally online sycophants, which I now wonder whether they are astroturfed.

  • e40  3 months ago

    I think the point is he could if he was a different person.

    • motorest  3 months ago

      > I think the point is he could if he was a different person.

      That statement is pointless. The critical factor is not money, it's willingness. You do not even need to be the world's richest man to put together a school. There are pro athletes with a fraction of the wealth that already do meaningful investments in education.

  • voidspark  3 months ago

    He has two degrees. BA in Physics and BSc in Economics

    • motorest  3 months ago

      > He has two degrees. BA in Physics and BSc in Economics

      You should verify your claims

      https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/musk-physics-degree/

      From the article:

      > Musk's past statements about his educational background, however, have been, at best, imprecise. He has claimed on several occasions to have received a physics degree in 1995 — a claim that was never fully true but which may have aided Musk's early business career.

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le-mark  3 months ago

Elon has proven to truly be the dumbest smart guy ever. He alienated Tesla’s core customers; tree hugging liberals, and anyone who cares about sustainability. The GOP nor their voters care and never will. I called this Tesla stock crash months ago; did not act on it though.

  • rco8786  3 months ago

    One interesting thing is that he seems completely unaware that he is the problem. Stepping back from DOGE to focus on Tesla again. He thinks that him getting closer to Tesla will help save the brand, when it's exactly his association with it that caused the damage in the first place.

    The best thing he could do for Tesla would be to step aside.

    > I called this Tesla stock crash months ago

    TSLA is currently up 5% MoM despite really, really horrible earnings and outlook. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent sometimes.

  • skellera  3 months ago

    I think less people care about it politically than you think. Most people I know who have Teslas stand by the product even through Elon’s dumb shit.

    I think people care more about their own convenience. There’s nothing else in our market that’s even comparable. People talk a lot of shit and it wasn’t great to start but FSD is on a different level now, especially on newer cars like the new Model Y. Having a car that mostly drives itself is the best purchase I’ve ever made.

    It doesn’t seem to be slowing down sales in Seattle. New Model Ys are everywhere here.

  • Animats  3 months ago

    He was smart. Then he started using drugs. Since then, he's made a lot of mistakes. It's pretty simple.

  • gosub100  3 months ago

    The fact that so many "climate activists" and environmentalists turned on him confirms my suspicion that they didn't think so highly about the earth or climate change in the first place. They care about partisan politics and their tribe more than the planet.

    • josv  3 months ago

      Be wary of confirmation bias. I don’t find it unlikely at all that Tesla owners have sincere environmental goals that could be overshadowed by other concerns. Let’s afford each other the grace of being rational expected utility maximizers.

    • zzzeek  3 months ago

      He spent hundreds of millions to get Trump elected, so that now the EPA is gutted, the closing of coal plants has been halted, and federal lands are set to be drilled and mined into oblivion. This is what climate activists correctly opposed and continue to oppose in opposing Musk.

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