Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Berkut]

It absolutely supports the claim that not everyone who is an engineer has an engineering degree.

It shows that 1 in 10 or so would be in Musks position - someone with a HS or "other" degree. 

You cannot claim Musk is lying about being an engineer because he doesn't have a degree unless not having a degree is somehow highly unusual such that simply saying "I am an engineer" implies a degree, like the way saying "I am a doctor" implies you have a doctors license, or "I am a lawyer" implies having passed the bar.

What is hilarious is how desperate you are to be right. It's ok - you can hate Musk even if he didn't lie about being an engineer!

[OttoVonBismarck]

Musk is most certainly a genius if you define it was some kind of incredibly intelligent person with unique drive, talent, and vision. He is also a douchebag, and you can make a good argument about his stability or lack thereof.

Angry at an article comparing Musk to Trump--who both have primarily the same sort of genius, i.e. making money off of bravado.

If Musk was just all about making himself a lot of cash, why do you think he is doing shit like SpaceX?

Berkut creduluously believing Musk runs SpaceX out of altruistic reasons--note this is a company that just opened up a new funding round valuing the company at $150bn.

Musk is kind of a d-bag, but I don't get why people have this cynical attitude that he is somehow secretly just lying about his motivations.

I think it is more about what people feel they have to believe about rich people then anything the actual evidence shows.

Berkut "just asking questions" about why people are cynical about his motivations, i.e. why would anyone question this smart, genius altruistic person. He does add in a cursory "he's a d-bag", which you obviously can tell he really means and it makes him definitely not a Muskie.

Yep, I think he is pretty much a complete asshole, and we could use a couple more like him.

But taking over Twitter? At best a distraction from what he ought to be focused on, and at worst a complete and utter disaster.

Another cursory claim he is a "bad guy", but clearly the crush remains--we need a few more like him. Sounds like every Trump supporter ever in their defense of the Orange Guy.

I don't agree that he wants to see the world burn, even sometimes. I've never seen anything like that from him.

No sir, Mr. Elon never want bad things.

Absolutely.

A privately held company owned and controlled by Musk could enact some criticial changes that could improve the platform immensely.

More robust authentication of users to eliminate bots for example.

Requiring users to "prove" they are human.

One of things he mentioned was making the algorithms open source and transparent.

All of this could be very good, in fact.

Berkut talking about how Musk can save Twitter.

There is a perfectly reasonable argument to be made that its bad enough that Musk can't make it that much worse....

Nope, Musk certainly can't make anything worse.

Here is the thing, I have functionally no respect for Berkut's position because Berkut isn't a pod person.

This was one of my earlier posts--I take it back by the way, I do in fact, think Berkut is a pod person now. I previously thought he was a fairly interesting / intelligent poster that you could count on to look at things critically, I know better now.

Yes, he is clearly making error after error.

I mean, what was he thinking with that crypto investment? Nobody else fell for such a thing!

And obviously he knows nothing about how to actually make money, which is totally clear because one of his investments isn't doing well at this particular moment in time.

If you objectively look at the man and how he has managed his finances, he is clearly terribly incompetent at this "making money" thing.

Defending dumb crypto investments.

You guys are a bunch of housewives reading tabloids about the private lives of some star you love to hate.

This is when he first started to reduce all criticism of Musk to "gossip." Nope, not a Muskie at all.

It's bizarre the level of hatred people have for him. You would think they are his kids moms.

Why would anyone hate Dear Father Muskie?

You cannot create Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla/Space X and manage them into the spectacular successes they are (the "incredibly valuable" part), without some savvy business dealings.

Also, I find it rather amusing that the knock on them is now going to be that their companies just became incredbily successful via the technology their founders had a key role in inventing, rather then "savvy business dealing".

Isn't that normally the knock on the right - that they don't really actually invent or do anything, they just make savvy business deals to create wealth?

Now, the knock on them is that they are not savvy, they just invent amazing shit that is incredibly successful?

Here he claims not only Musk but Jobs and Gates made billions off of "inventing things" which is untrue for all three men, almost hilariously so.

Yeah, but he is a dick. Let's stay focused on what is important.

Can we have another 50 assholes like Musk please?

WE NEED MORE MUSK. (Not a Muskie!)

BTW that's only half of this thread, I don't think I need to keep going.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Let's make it clear too before Berkut obfuscates the point more--the actual Twitter thread I linked to contains tons of direct quotes from Elon touting his training in "Computational Physics" (did not exist at UPenn), and a number of other specific quotes about how his education has made him able to work as an expert in advanced technical matters at his companies. These interviews go back as far as 2005 and appear as recently as 2018. Musk himself is saying his education was important and it is part of how he is such a brilliant engineer--when he actually didn't graduate with a Physics degree and the only direct evidence from his time in school show he was a year behind in his studies and struggling when he dropped out.

[Berkut]

Let's make it clear too before Berkut obfuscates the point more--the actual Twitter thread I linked to contains tons of direct quotes from Elon touting his training in "Computational Physics" (did not exist at UPenn), and a number of other specific quotes about how his education has made him able to work as an expert in advanced technical matters at his companies. These interviews go back as far as 2005 and appear as recently as 2018. Musk himself is saying his education was important and it is part of how he is such a brilliant engineer--when he actually didn't graduate with a Physics degree and the only direct evidence from his time in school show he was a year behind in his studies and struggling when he dropped out.

Did not argue with any of that.

Just pointed out that saying he is an engineer does not claim that he has a degree in engineering. Or any degree at all, for that matter.

You are very selective in your quoting.

[Berkut]

You are quite the master of the dishonest quoting and selectively just ignoring what people say.

I say a lot of stuff. A lot of it is straight out disparaging of Musk, and agreeing that he is in fact an asshole, and some of it is pointing out that despite that, not everything anyone says about him that is negative MUST be true.

You actually quote me saying disparaging things, but claim that I am lying when I say them, but of course, I am not lying when I say something YOU say is terrible is bullshit - those are my "true" Muskie views. Along with everyone else who has pointed out that you are talking out of your ass as well, of course - they are all Muskies.

The mob mentality of your posting is telling. You MUST agree with every single details of my hatred, or you are in alliance with that which I hate. There can be no acceptable ground anywhere but where YOU stand. 

[Berkut]

Defending dumb crypto investments.[

This is an easy case in point. This is a straight out lie on your part. 

You quote me, where I do not at all defend his crypto investment, and then immediately say I defended his crypto investment. 

I mean...you know I did not say that. You know I know I did not say that. 

But you don't care - it advances your narrative, and that is all that matters.

[The Larch]

Going back to Musk's shenanigans at Twitter, today Marjorie Taylor Greene has been reinstated.

[mongers]

Going back to Musk's shenanigans at Twitter, today Marjorie Taylor Greene has been reinstated.

Damn, Larch, and now you've gone and spoiled such a 'promising' thread.

[Berkut]

Going back to Musk's shenanigans at Twitter, today Marjorie Taylor Greene has been reinstated.

Do you think that is an obviously bad move?

[The Larch]

Going back to Musk's shenanigans at Twitter, today Marjorie Taylor Greene has been reinstated.

Do you think that is an obviously bad move?

TBH, I didn't even know she had been banned from there.

Edit: Just read a bit, apparently it's her personal account the one being reinstated. It was suspended earlier this year for disseminating misinformation regarding Covid vaccines, after a long history of violations of Twitter policies. Her official account as congresswoman was not affected.

[viper37]

that lying is much more serious then whether or not he actually has an engineering degree but calls himself an engineer (which isn't a lie at all, since you can in fact be an engineer without an engineering degree, and he has never, so far as I know, claimed to have an engineering degree at all, since a physics degree isn't an engineering degree in the first place).

I always thought that in US & Canada, one could called itself and "engineer" without having an engineering degree.    Like, "softwar engineers"?  It's not something that would be allowed in Quebec, the name "engineer" is attached to the civil code and regulated by their professional order: you need the proper degree, you need to have joined the order and be in good standing. 

I've known a couple of structural engineers who suffered partial radiations because they exceeded the limits of their profession, and some who got in deep trouble because they called themselves "engineers" while they were no longer members of their professionnal order.

I always thought the rules were looser in the US and English Canada?  I've read so many software articles talking about "computer engineers" and people describing themselves as "engineers" or "architects" that I thought the name wasn't as regulated as it is over here.

Not too sure about the use "Doctor" for a PhD.  Oex would know better than me.  I know "Professor" is the preferred term.

[Zoupa]

I used to be a "Muskie" I guess, starting when the Falcons started landing their booster back on Earth. I didn't do a deep dive into Musk, I just accepted the general narrative at that time, which was "this dude is a genius inventor that's going to bring us to Mars". Musk certainly portrayed himself as such through his many media appearances and interviews.

I think the disenchantment for a lot of folks came in the last couple of years. The taking Tesla private saga, the stuck kids in the cave, the Kanye West stuff, the numerous articles coming out with detailed research about how he made his fortune, the many lies, the Tesla union busting, the "touch my dick and I'll give you a horse", the general 4chan/edgelordiness of his online presence.

Tesla would have happened without him. Spacex would have happened without him. The man is not some genius inventor. He's just another late stage capitalism billionaire with an inflated sense of self.

[Grey Fox]

Reminder that CEOs are mostly useless. Especially Musk. Dude is the CEO of 4 companies, FFS.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I just accepted the general narrative at that time, which was "this dude is a genius inventor that's going to bring us to Mars".

That is certainly as far as Berkut's brain has ever processed it.

[Sophie Scholl]

Musk's reinstating of some of the most dreadful accounts and relaxing or removal of a lot of the community standards has made Twitter absolutely dreadful. I keep blocking troll accounts and keep refusing trending topics, but they just pop back up. It's annoying as heck and a game of whack-a-mole I'm running out of interest in playing.