Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[grumbler]

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.

No arguments from me on that line.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and we are seeing it happen in front of our eyes.

[crazy canuck]

Those who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.

I will give him kudos for having ideas and vision.  But the fact that people say he is responsible for Space X ignores the people that actually did the work.

[Berkut]

Those who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.

Yeah, I wonder if we would all be better off if he got hit by a bus at this point. Or some kind of tragic event that would solidify his legacy of what he accomplished that was useful, while stopping him from destroying that utility with his narcissism.

[Josquius]

I think the thing with him is that his asshole traits are pretty tied to his business traits.
It's the same sort of mental issues that see him getting involved in petty shit on twitter that make him look beyond sensible business decisions towards "wee rockets are cool".

I will respect him on tesla. The whole open patent wanting to be imitated making electric cars cool thing is good.

[Berkut]

Those who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.

I will give him kudos for having ideas and vision.  But the fact that people say he is responsible for Space X ignores the people that actually did the work.

Maybe if he had slipped on a banana and broken his neck at 12 years old and none of us knew he existed, that same decline in cost to put payload into space would have happened anyway.

[DGuller]

Those who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.

I think he's also a lucky reckless asshole.  He's the type to put all his wealth on a single number of roulette, win, do it again and win again, and conclude that the laws of probability don't apply to him.

[PJL]

Those who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.

Yeah, I wonder if we would all be better off if he got hit by a bus at this point. Or some kind of tragic event that would solidify his legacy of what he accomplished that was useful, while stopping him from destroying that utility with his narcissism.

It makes you wonder if Steve Jobs would have got to where Elon Musk is now and is going to, had he not died when he did from cancer.

[PJL]

I think the thing with him is that his asshole traits are pretty tied to his business traits.
It's the same sort of mental issues that see him getting involved in petty shit on twitter that make him look beyond sensible business decisions towards "wee rockets are cool".

I think that's true of all great entrepreneurs to some extent, they have to be some sort of asshole to not give up trying and continue to be imaginative and disruptive to existing business practices in their area.

[crazy canuck]

Those who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.

I will give him kudos for having ideas and vision.  But the fact that people say he is responsible for Space X ignores the people that actually did the work.

Maybe if he had slipped on a banana and broken his neck at 12 years old and none of us knew he existed, that same decline in cost to put payload into space would have happened anyway.

More like if that had happened in say 2004ish it would have happened anyway.

[Zanza]

The whole open patent wanting to be imitated making electric cars cool thing is good.

That was a pure PR move, which worked in you. First, Tesla does actually not have that many patents compared to other OEMs and second, Tesla did not patent its competition differentiating IP, e.g its battery software, its own chips etc.

[Zanza]

 

[FunkMonk]

Sad to see an institution collapse because of one man's hubris.

[crazy canuck]

I am going to miss it.  A number of people I follow have left.  I am starting to get things in my feed I never used to get, that are more like the types of things Valmy referred to earlier.  Not sure how long I am going to stay.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, I'm not one who is going to reflexively leave, but I use Twitter for infotainment. If the quality gets bad and I have to sift through a bunch of stuff to get to what I want, I'll discontinue. The way it has traditionally worked is you can mostly curate what shows up in your feed to primarily be things you are interested in, we'll see if it changes for the worse.

[grumbler]

Maybe if he had slipped on a banana and broken his neck at 12 years old and none of us knew he existed, that same decline in cost to put payload into space would have happened anyway.

Sure, but it would have taken much longer.  SpaceX does innovative research because Musk decided that that was the way to go, and without SpaceX US (at least) space vehicle R&D would have proceeded down the same track of diminishing returns it was on before SpaceX.

I think that Tesla is much less technically impressive and owes less to Musk, but SpaceX and The Boring Company are basically his creations and reflect his engineering concepts.