Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Grey Fox]

Berkut's evolution from a Musk hater to a Musk apologist is also quite interesting.

[Valmy]

I think the success of Musk is highly contingent, all of his companies and life in general seems to always be teetering on the edge of catastrophe. But his reusable rockets are a major blessing, he's a big player in carbon sequestering projects and driving the switch to electrical vehicles. The constant whiny and gossipy asshurt he causes English speaking online progressives seems to be because of his penchant for shitposting and his slightly heterodox views away from whatever is trending that week on Twitter.

It is more than just the shitposting. I don't care about shitposting and in fact that is probably a huge reason he is making saving the world cool. Shitpost and have heterodox views I don't give a shit.

But it is the weird stuff he does that makes me nervous. Eventually assaulting people and neglecting your children and casual drug use kind of stuff will eventually take him down. Wish he wouldn't do that kind of shit, especially not so publicly.

Or not. Maybe eventually you get so rich you can do whatever you want. We will see how this lawsuit goes, speaking of twitter.

[Berkut]

Berkut's evolution from a Musk hater to a Musk apologist is also quite interesting.

Ive never been either of those things, actually.

[crazy canuck]

Would you prefer "staunch defender"?

[DGuller]

I imagine that Berkut hates bad arguments, or good arguments taken too far, even in support of a good position. 

Was Hitler a bad guy?  Most certainly.  Was he worse than Hitler?  No, he wasn't, that's just the objective truth.  The fact that someone is going to correctly argue that Hitler wasn't worse than Hitler doesn't make one a Hitler apologist.

[The Minsky Moment]

But it is the weird stuff he does that makes me nervous. Eventually assaulting people and neglecting your children and casual drug use kind of stuff will eventually take him down.

Although I would not encourage corporate leaders to engage in those activities, many have done all that and much worse without impacting their efficacy much.

What bothers ME is the erratic *corporate* behavior. Regular violation of SEC rules is a very bad habit. Having a crypto initiative for show is one thing, sinking billions in company treasury funds into such a speculative asset is just bad business practice.  One can slap a master narrative on the twitter fiasco but apply Occam's razor and it is what it appears, a decision to commit to a multi-billion transaction based on a transitory whim or mood swing, to buy a company that would just be a distraction from other ventures that require his close attention.  And my concern would be that it appears that his erratic behavior is getting worse over time.

[The Minsky Moment]

Was Hitler a bad guy?  Most certainly.  Was he worse than Hitler?  No, he wasn't, that's just the objective truth.

Not so.  Adolf was worse than Alois.

[DGuller]

I do find the general arguments of the form "He couldn't have gotten to where he is by being X" to be flawed, for multiple reasons.  One flaw is that humans tend to vastly underestimate luck in success.  Another flaw is that he may not have been X when he was getting to where he is today, but he became X when he got there.

[Jacob]

I do find the general arguments of the form "He couldn't have gotten to where he is by being X" to be flawed, for multiple reasons.  One flaw is that humans tend to vastly underestimate luck in success.  Another flaw is that he may not have been X when he was getting to where he is today, but he became X when he got there.

Agreed on both counts.

[The Minsky Moment]

I do find the general arguments of the form "He couldn't have gotten to where he is by being X" to be flawed, for multiple reasons.  One flaw is that humans tend to vastly underestimate luck in success.  Another flaw is that he may not have been X when he was getting to where he is today, but he became X when he got there.

Both good points and another is personal qualities that may be conducive to great success in one context (time, place, business environment etc.) may be less useful or even counterproductive when circumstances change.

US business history is littered with cases of highly regarded corporate leaders and entrepeneurs who lost their reputations by sticking around too long.

[crazy canuck]

I imagine that Berkut hates bad arguments, or good arguments taken too far, even in support of a good position. 

Was Hitler a bad guy?  Most certainly.  Was he worse than Hitler?  No, he wasn't, that's just the objective truth.  The fact that someone is going to correctly argue that Hitler wasn't worse than Hitler doesn't make one a Hitler apologist.

Good thing nobody was making that argument. 

[crazy canuck]

I do find the general arguments of the form "He couldn't have gotten to where he is by being X" to be flawed, for multiple reasons.  One flaw is that humans tend to vastly underestimate luck in success.  Another flaw is that he may not have been X when he was getting to where he is today, but he became X when he got there.

Both good points and another is personal qualities that may be conducive to great success in one context (time, place, business environment etc.) may be less useful or even counterproductive when circumstances change.

US business history is littered with cases of highly regarded corporate leaders and entrepeneurs who lost their reputations by sticking around too long.

With Musk, it is likely the latter rather than the former.  His personality quirks are probably well suited to start ups.

[Berkut]

Would you prefer "staunch defender"?

Nope, not that either.

[Valmy]

I get where Berkut is coming from. I end up defending all kinds of shitty figures online just because I don't sufficiently hate them by the standards of the person I am talking to.

[Berkut]

I thought I tried pretty hard to explain my perspective on Musk.

He is rather obviously a pretty shitty human being.

But that is by far the least interesting part of who he is - being a shitty father, or crappy boss, or self absorbed asshole? There are literally millions of people out there just like him in those areas. Who cares? How is that interesting? 

He is an interesting person we are talking about because of the things he has accomplished. But the fact that he is an asshole, means that people who get worked up about what an asshole he is tend to try to minimize the things he accomplished. That makes no sense to me, and makes the interesting discussion harder to have.

It is celebrity worship. *I* am not the one who is obsessed with him, much more it is the people who feel like they need to follow his personal life. It is tabloid fascination with someone being asshole *because* of his accomplishments. Absent them, his being a shitty dad or a crappy boss is completely uninteresting. I find Musk interesting because I find the things he has accomplished interesting. I think a discussion about those things is interesting. I think arguing with someone about whether Musk is the key to lowering cost to orbit, or whether that was going to happen anyway, and he just happened to be in the right place to reap the reward interesting. People who disagree with me about his accomplishments - that is an interesting discussion. 

But whether or not he is a good dad? Or whether he wanted a hand job from his assistant? Those are the LEAST interesting things about him. He is a unique figure in the areas of space exploitation, electric and digital cars. There is nothing unique about his being a douchebag.

It is just another form of celebrity worship. This desire to know all about the personal lives of famous people.