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What Elon Musk Should Learn from the Thailand Cave Rescue

127 points by libraryofbabel 8y ago

WaxProlix 8y ago
When he got called out for his PR stunt, Elon responded by publicly calling the British rescue diver a paedophile. What a bad look. Editing to ask: Why did this get flagged/dead'd? Feels like a PR campaign is getting bad Elon press removed both here and on Reddit.
- libraryofbabel 8y ago
  It looks like it's now been unflagged. It's worth noting that the article is quite moderate in tone (praises Musk for his offer to help etc.), and is mainly asking bigger questions about the Silicon Valley mentality of rushing to apply quick technical solutions outside one's domain of expertise. (Engineer's Disease is a term I've also seen used for this.) But since then Musk made his defamatory comments on Twitter about one of the rescue divers and the whole thing kinda blew up. Edit: annnnnd it got flagged again. I guess Musk still has a few defenders on here.
  - danso 8y ago
    It might be flagged by people just tired of seeing Tesla/Musk threads period, which is understandable. But the posted article is more about the Silicon Valley mentality.
- deleted 8y ago
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- deleted 8y ago
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- sctb 8y ago
  Regular community members are doing the flagging. Since this submission is probably the least bad of the wave of recent articles, though, we'll make sure it doesn't get flagkilled.
- tptacek 8y ago
  I don't know why it got flagged in the first place, but I flagged it for the suggestion that people who disagree with you are part of a PR campaign, which is an banned argument that is specifically called out in the guidelines. (I loathe Elon Musk, for whatever that's worth.)
  - aerovistae 8y ago
    Why do you loathe him? I’m surprised to hear you say that.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      I simultaneously loathe him (and think you shouldn't patronize his businesses) and also agree with Dan Gackle's take that discussions about Musk on HN are like arguments about Spider Man, so I'll spare you the details.
  - somecontext 8y ago
    In case anyone else was curious, the relevant paragraph in the guidelines appears to be the following: > Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data.
  - WaxProlix 8y ago
    My post wasn't flagged (afaik), the article was.
danso 8y ago
When Musk's offer of help to Thailand was first discussed here, I said I thought I didn't think it was a cynical PR stunt, because Musk gets into all kinds of musings/tinkerings, for better or worse, when people prompt him on Twitter. I think the self-meltdown he's had since the rescue bolsters my point, that his initiative was a gut reaction more than a thought-out PR ploy. It boggles my mind the number of people who argue, "Well, at least he helped!", as if attempts to help are always a net good. It's fine if he sent help, or if he were privately working on a solution. Tweeting his prototype as it was being developed, as if it were on the cusp of success, was not helpful. It put undue pressure on the rescue chief -- imagine if the operation had failed and children had died? Can you imagine the vitriol the chief would face by armchair critics for not waiting, or for not trying out Musk's solution? I can't be the only one who thought the rescue operation would end with some casualties (so soon after that former Thai SEAL died). But everyone was rescued, and it turned out the rescue chief/governor made the right call under pressure. Musk, who was accountable to no one, ripping into the rescue chief is the height of douchebaggery. Well, at least until this morning when he called one of the rescuers a "pedo".
- kibibu 8y ago
  One of the most interesting points about the submarine IMO was a comment on Ars Technica's article by an apparently qualified commenter: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/elon-musk-built-a-submarine-to-rescue-thailand-kids-heres-what-it-looks-like/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/elon-musk-built-a-su... > I certainly wouldn't be on the cave side of it (as opposed to the entrance side - when I was acting as a guide I wouldn't even be on the non-entrence side of fat divers if the system had restrictions) (restrictions means tight, bendy bits) If the long, rigid, metal sub got stuck in any way in the cave, the kids and divers behind it were also stuck, and probably doomed (good luck getting cutting equipment in there to dismantle it).
  - petertodd 8y ago
    Thing is, what's the alternative? We're just lucky the plan they went with actually worked - strap the kids in tightly to a semi-enclosed stretcher with lots of anti-anxiety drugs and a positive pressure facemask. AFAIK rescuing people from a cave underwater who aren't already divers has never been done before at all, and I've heard of a few cases where similar rescues have failed with the deaths of the victims (e.g. someone getting stuck in tidal mud flats where a diver tried using a full face mask to keep them alive until the morning - they panicked, lost the mask, and died). Lots of things like the kids being in worse health than they were, or the combo of drugs and bravery/meditation not being enough could have made that plan fail. Just keeping those kids alive already killed one diver due to an accident - if the plan had failed even just resupplying them until conditions improved could have easily killed more given the bad conditions. Also remember that the rescue was willing and able to modify the cave with drilling (and even blasting) to make passages wider and easier to navigate (there's public footage of the rescuers doing this). This is an aspect of cave rescue that can be controversial and isn't often talked about, but I think it's totally justified here, and could have easily reduced the risk of the thing getting stuck (which happens to patients^H^H^H bodies too...). Unfortunately this was a really bad situation without a guaranteed good outcome.
Robotbeat 8y ago
Log off Twitter. And I say that because I like the guy.
appleiigs 8y ago
A great article. It's like Elon has forgotten about all the bugs and edge cases he has seen at his companies. Successful software is based on iterations (eg. Chrome version 67.03396.99). The safety culture says procedures are "written in blood", which is effectively previous iterations with people's lives. Elon seems too eager to put the Thai lives on the line in version 1.0.
- 67_45 8y ago
  How is any of that relevant when the task has never been done before and there is a deadline? They iterated as much as they could given the deadline, past which the kids would die anyway? Fuzzy thinks ng is abound in this topic.
  - appleiigs 8y ago
    Elon has never done anything like it before, but cave diving rescuers/experts and navy do have their skills from experience.
    - 67_45 8y ago
      Actually this rescue was unprecedented from what I've read.
      - jacobush 8y ago
        I was going to downvote but the comment is already gray. Not so unprecedented so as to not involve cave divers and SEAL, no? It's not like they sent in expert accountants or race drivers to rescue those children. Do you think team Musk or team Divers were the most fit for that mission?
        67_45 8y ago
        You are confusing yourself. I never spoke about who the most qualified person was for any task whatsoever. That has nothing to do with anything because I don't really think it's in contention who knows more about cave diving. I simply said that rescuing small weak boys who have zero diving experience from miles of submerged cave is basically something that has happened very seldomly. And I am correct. I said that in relation to my claim that musk wasn't passing up tried and true methods because there were none because this never happens. If you actually have a substantive remark on any of that please let me know.
Atheros 8y ago
People have been trying to tell Elon Musk and Silicon Valley this for years now. https://pedestrianobservations.com/2013/08/13/loopy-ideas-are-fine-if-youre-an-entrepreneur/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2013/08/13/loopy-ideas-ar... "Musk’s real sin is not the elementary mistakes; it’s this lack of context. The lack of references comes from the same place, and so does the utter indifference to the unrealistically low costs. This turns it from a wrong idea that still has interesting contributions to make to a hackneyed proposal that should be dismissed and forgotten as soon as possible. I write this not to help bury Musk; I’m not nearly famous enough to even hit a nail in his coffin. I write this to point out that, in the US, people will treat any crank seriously if he has enough money or enough prowess in another field. A sufficiently rich person is surrounded by sycophants and stenographers who won’t check his numbers against anything. There are two stories here. In the less interesting one, Musk is a modern-day streetcar conspiracy mogul: he has a car company, he hopes to make money off of it in the future and uses non-generally accepted accounting to claim he already does, and he constantly trash-talks high-speed rail, which competes with his product. Since he’s not proposing to build Hyperloop soon, it could be viewed as clever distraction or FUD. The more interesting possibility, which I am inclined toward, is that this is not fraud, or not primarily fraud. Musk is the sort of person who thinks he can wend his way from starting online companies to building cars and selling them without dealerships. I have not seen a single defense of the technical details of the proposal except for one Facebook comment that claims, doubly erroneously, that the high lateral acceleration is no problem because the tubes can be canted. Everyone, including the Facebook comment, instead gushes about Musk personally. The thinking is that he’s rich, so he must always have something interesting to say; he can’t be a huckster when venturing outside his field. It would be unthinkable to treat people as professionals in their own fields, who take years to make a successful sideways move and who need to be extremely careful not to make elementary mistakes. The superheros of American media coverage would instantly collapse, relegated to a specialized role while mere mortals take over most functions."
- kjeetgill 8y ago
  There's plenty of legitimate criticism to make of Elon. He gets investments for his "big ideas" on sheer reputation and bravado but it's pretty unfair to say it's not even partly deserved. He's legitimatly pulled off a tremendous amount between Space X and Tesla even if he disld promise much more. I'm not saying don't hold him accountable, and he's been eratic on social media lately, but Jesus ... Have some perspective. Selecting a handful of quotes from you: > I write this to point out that, in the US, people will treat any crank seriously if he has enough money or enough prowess in another field. > Since he’s not proposing to build Hyperloop soon, it could be viewed as clever distraction or FUD. > The thinking is that he’s rich, so he must always have something interesting to say; he can’t be a huckster when venturing outside his field. Do you think maybe there's a middle ground between infallible god and delusional crank and huckster?
deleted 8y ago
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libraryofbabel 8y ago
The deeper point here - what the article is actually about but which has now been obscured by Musk's spectacular Twitter meltdown - is one about different kinds of technical culture. Silicon Valley culture has transformed our world, but it brings with it downsides and dangers. One of which is the "Engineer's Disease" - the overconfident assumption that expertise in one field gives us the ability to wade into some other domain and whip up quick technical solutions to complex problems. It's not a sin to suffer from Engineer's Disease. I fall victim to it occasionally myself. But we need to collectively get better at recognizing the symptoms, taking a deep breath and asking "do I really understand this, or do I just believe I understand it." Musk's submarine was an almost perfect example. Take some "rocket parts" (his words) and a dash of SpaceX magic dust, put some smart engineers together in a room, save the kids and take home the glory. Except it doesn't actually work that way. To a diver who had actually been in the cave, it was so clearly unworkable: it was a rigid metal cylinder and it just wasn't going to fit round tight corners. The expertise that mattered was that of the rescue divers, combined with specific knowledge of the cave - a completely different technical culture that is safety-oriented and in which untested innovation is generally a quick route to an unpleasant death. I'm just glad that the latter culture was the one that prevailed in this case. Otherwise things might have ended rather differently.
senectus1 8y ago
ffs he was doing so well... I mean his efforts were real and sincere and REQUESTED https://i.redd.it/l5cdo36ns4911.jpg https://i.redd.it/l5cdo36ns4911.jpg (sorry for the Reddit hosted image I was after a quick reference)
aaron695 8y ago
> In the case of Mr. Musk and his submarine, the Thai authorities understood that they needed to let the expert cave divers plan and direct the rescue operation Thailand is a military junta that had to be very carefully not to lose face, getting the boys out HAD to be sold as a Thailand run story internally. The things done would not have been in the boys interest. I think the Thai's went early to keep face. It's possible the cave divers backed them since the longer you leave it, the great chance of deaths. It might have matched, but there would have been more politics involved than there should have been. I'd like to know how the Thai Navy Seal diver died.
archagon 8y ago
I'm very concerned that the original post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17535801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17535801) was flagged into oblivion. It's somewhat understandable when it happens to political articles, but this is a high-profile tech CEO literally calling a heroic rescuer a pedophile. If nothing else, the event could cause significant turmoil for Tesla and his other companies. Disappointed in the HN community today.
- joshmn 8y ago
  Same. It's fine for Elon to disagree with someone. It's fine for anyone to disagree with anyone, frankly. It's not fine to disparage the hard work with such a tasteless and baseless accusation. I don't know how thin his skin is, but this hero will soon be just a moment in time; Elon will stick around. I'd hate to see what a balloon would do to Elon. I'm probably more irritated with Elon's comment than most people here because I know what a pedophile is. You probably don't want to know how I know either. If someone blatantly molested, caressed, or otherwise violated your middle school-aged son or daughter, you'd be livid. That's what Elon is so baselessly accusing this man of, for no reason other than because he didn't get to use his little toy on the big stage for all the world to see. Yes, there is a more general definition of pedophilia, but that definition is far lost on society. This isn't 2005 when gay "means" dumb.
  - 67_45 8y ago
    He responded to rudeness with rudeness. He spent money and suffered a PR black eye in an effort to help and this guy went on CNN and told Elon to shove the submarine up his ass. That is the absolute height of rudeness -- nobody has even mentioned it. And even worse, the British ex Pat justified his juvenile comment by basically saying that the submarine was I'll conceived and that it was all a PR stunt. Saying the sub wouldn't have worked doesn't make sense because it wouldn't make Elon a bad guy and it wouldn't be a reason to hate him. And saying that this all was a PR stunt is highly, highly insulting -- basically saying that he has no soul and is taking advantage of potentially the death of a dozen young boys simply to shore up his public image a little. That is a far worse accusation than "pedo." Just because the ex Pat is not famous doesn't excuse that kind of behaviour. And just because Elon is famous doesn't mean he isn't human or justified in responding in kind to this guy. And everyone is going to pile on me for being in the Elon cult and being an Elon fan boy and on and on. It's just the way I see it, I'm not in a cult or a fan club. Don't try to brush away the logic of my words with stupid shortcuts like those. He was asked to continue on the sub by people in the water. His efforts never obstructed or inhibited any of the other, main rescue efforts in any way. Whether or not the sub would have worked is irrelevant because it was simply presented to the rescuers as a last ditch option. This entire fixation with Elon musk and the sub and frankly everything involving Elon musk is insane. Everyone is rallying against the musk "fan boys" yet the landslide majority of people are on the anti-musk bandwagon everywhere I look. And by the way, a pedo is someone with the mental illness symptom of sexual attraction to children, not someone who has molested children. Sorry if you or someone you know got molested but it's not relevant. If you want to ban pedo jokes because you have PTSD that's an entirely different conversation.
Dolanator11 8y ago
No, really, it was just a PR push. Simple as that. And his anger shows that he's frustrated for not managing to score goodboi points with the global media and public opinion. If you really only cared about the outcome (saving the kids), you'd be more modest. But he only cared about his image, hence his frustration and name-calling.
- SpecialistEMT 8y ago
  He acted like a little kid. Losing faith in the guy.
eric24234 8y ago
After the news Elon donated to Trump's party, i am very disappointed.

When he got called out for his PR stunt, Elon responded by publicly calling the British rescue diver a paedophile. What a bad look. Editing to ask: Why did this get flagged/dead'd? Feels like a PR campaign is getting bad Elon press removed both here and on Reddit.

libraryofbabel 8y ago
It looks like it's now been unflagged. It's worth noting that the article is quite moderate in tone (praises Musk for his offer to help etc.), and is mainly asking bigger questions about the Silicon Valley mentality of rushing to apply quick technical solutions outside one's domain of expertise. (Engineer's Disease is a term I've also seen used for this.) But since then Musk made his defamatory comments on Twitter about one of the rescue divers and the whole thing kinda blew up. Edit: annnnnd it got flagged again. I guess Musk still has a few defenders on here.
- danso 8y ago
  It might be flagged by people just tired of seeing Tesla/Musk threads period, which is understandable. But the posted article is more about the Silicon Valley mentality.
deleted 8y ago
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deleted 8y ago
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sctb 8y ago
Regular community members are doing the flagging. Since this submission is probably the least bad of the wave of recent articles, though, we'll make sure it doesn't get flagkilled.
tptacek 8y ago
I don't know why it got flagged in the first place, but I flagged it for the suggestion that people who disagree with you are part of a PR campaign, which is an banned argument that is specifically called out in the guidelines. (I loathe Elon Musk, for whatever that's worth.)
- aerovistae 8y ago
  Why do you loathe him? I’m surprised to hear you say that.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    I simultaneously loathe him (and think you shouldn't patronize his businesses) and also agree with Dan Gackle's take that discussions about Musk on HN are like arguments about Spider Man, so I'll spare you the details.
- somecontext 8y ago
  In case anyone else was curious, the relevant paragraph in the guidelines appears to be the following: > Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data.
- WaxProlix 8y ago
  My post wasn't flagged (afaik), the article was.

danso 8y ago

When Musk's offer of help to Thailand was first discussed here, I said I thought I didn't think it was a cynical PR stunt, because Musk gets into all kinds of musings/tinkerings, for better or worse, when people prompt him on Twitter. I think the self-meltdown he's had since the rescue bolsters my point, that his initiative was a gut reaction more than a thought-out PR ploy. It boggles my mind the number of people who argue, "Well, at least he helped!", as if attempts to help are always a net good. It's fine if he sent help, or if he were privately working on a solution. Tweeting his prototype as it was being developed, as if it were on the cusp of success, was not helpful. It put undue pressure on the rescue chief -- imagine if the operation had failed and children had died? Can you imagine the vitriol the chief would face by armchair critics for not waiting, or for not trying out Musk's solution? I can't be the only one who thought the rescue operation would end with some casualties (so soon after that former Thai SEAL died). But everyone was rescued, and it turned out the rescue chief/governor made the right call under pressure. Musk, who was accountable to no one, ripping into the rescue chief is the height of douchebaggery. Well, at least until this morning when he called one of the rescuers a "pedo".

kibibu 8y ago
One of the most interesting points about the submarine IMO was a comment on Ars Technica's article by an apparently qualified commenter: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/elon-musk-built-a-submarine-to-rescue-thailand-kids-heres-what-it-looks-like/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/elon-musk-built-a-su... > I certainly wouldn't be on the cave side of it (as opposed to the entrance side - when I was acting as a guide I wouldn't even be on the non-entrence side of fat divers if the system had restrictions) (restrictions means tight, bendy bits) If the long, rigid, metal sub got stuck in any way in the cave, the kids and divers behind it were also stuck, and probably doomed (good luck getting cutting equipment in there to dismantle it).
- petertodd 8y ago
  Thing is, what's the alternative? We're just lucky the plan they went with actually worked - strap the kids in tightly to a semi-enclosed stretcher with lots of anti-anxiety drugs and a positive pressure facemask. AFAIK rescuing people from a cave underwater who aren't already divers has never been done before at all, and I've heard of a few cases where similar rescues have failed with the deaths of the victims (e.g. someone getting stuck in tidal mud flats where a diver tried using a full face mask to keep them alive until the morning - they panicked, lost the mask, and died). Lots of things like the kids being in worse health than they were, or the combo of drugs and bravery/meditation not being enough could have made that plan fail. Just keeping those kids alive already killed one diver due to an accident - if the plan had failed even just resupplying them until conditions improved could have easily killed more given the bad conditions. Also remember that the rescue was willing and able to modify the cave with drilling (and even blasting) to make passages wider and easier to navigate (there's public footage of the rescuers doing this). This is an aspect of cave rescue that can be controversial and isn't often talked about, but I think it's totally justified here, and could have easily reduced the risk of the thing getting stuck (which happens to patients^H^H^H bodies too...). Unfortunately this was a really bad situation without a guaranteed good outcome.

Robotbeat 8y ago

Log off Twitter. And I say that because I like the guy.

appleiigs 8y ago

A great article. It's like Elon has forgotten about all the bugs and edge cases he has seen at his companies. Successful software is based on iterations (eg. Chrome version 67.03396.99). The safety culture says procedures are "written in blood", which is effectively previous iterations with people's lives. Elon seems too eager to put the Thai lives on the line in version 1.0.

67_45 8y ago
How is any of that relevant when the task has never been done before and there is a deadline? They iterated as much as they could given the deadline, past which the kids would die anyway? Fuzzy thinks ng is abound in this topic.
- appleiigs 8y ago
  Elon has never done anything like it before, but cave diving rescuers/experts and navy do have their skills from experience.
  - 67_45 8y ago
    Actually this rescue was unprecedented from what I've read.
    - jacobush 8y ago
      I was going to downvote but the comment is already gray. Not so unprecedented so as to not involve cave divers and SEAL, no? It's not like they sent in expert accountants or race drivers to rescue those children. Do you think team Musk or team Divers were the most fit for that mission?
      - 67_45 8y ago
        You are confusing yourself. I never spoke about who the most qualified person was for any task whatsoever. That has nothing to do with anything because I don't really think it's in contention who knows more about cave diving. I simply said that rescuing small weak boys who have zero diving experience from miles of submerged cave is basically something that has happened very seldomly. And I am correct. I said that in relation to my claim that musk wasn't passing up tried and true methods because there were none because this never happens. If you actually have a substantive remark on any of that please let me know.

Atheros 8y ago

People have been trying to tell Elon Musk and Silicon Valley this for years now. https://pedestrianobservations.com/2013/08/13/loopy-ideas-are-fine-if-youre-an-entrepreneur/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2013/08/13/loopy-ideas-ar... "Musk’s real sin is not the elementary mistakes; it’s this lack of context. The lack of references comes from the same place, and so does the utter indifference to the unrealistically low costs. This turns it from a wrong idea that still has interesting contributions to make to a hackneyed proposal that should be dismissed and forgotten as soon as possible. I write this not to help bury Musk; I’m not nearly famous enough to even hit a nail in his coffin. I write this to point out that, in the US, people will treat any crank seriously if he has enough money or enough prowess in another field. A sufficiently rich person is surrounded by sycophants and stenographers who won’t check his numbers against anything. There are two stories here. In the less interesting one, Musk is a modern-day streetcar conspiracy mogul: he has a car company, he hopes to make money off of it in the future and uses non-generally accepted accounting to claim he already does, and he constantly trash-talks high-speed rail, which competes with his product. Since he’s not proposing to build Hyperloop soon, it could be viewed as clever distraction or FUD. The more interesting possibility, which I am inclined toward, is that this is not fraud, or not primarily fraud. Musk is the sort of person who thinks he can wend his way from starting online companies to building cars and selling them without dealerships. I have not seen a single defense of the technical details of the proposal except for one Facebook comment that claims, doubly erroneously, that the high lateral acceleration is no problem because the tubes can be canted. Everyone, including the Facebook comment, instead gushes about Musk personally. The thinking is that he’s rich, so he must always have something interesting to say; he can’t be a huckster when venturing outside his field. It would be unthinkable to treat people as professionals in their own fields, who take years to make a successful sideways move and who need to be extremely careful not to make elementary mistakes. The superheros of American media coverage would instantly collapse, relegated to a specialized role while mere mortals take over most functions."

kjeetgill 8y ago
There's plenty of legitimate criticism to make of Elon. He gets investments for his "big ideas" on sheer reputation and bravado but it's pretty unfair to say it's not even partly deserved. He's legitimatly pulled off a tremendous amount between Space X and Tesla even if he disld promise much more. I'm not saying don't hold him accountable, and he's been eratic on social media lately, but Jesus ... Have some perspective. Selecting a handful of quotes from you: > I write this to point out that, in the US, people will treat any crank seriously if he has enough money or enough prowess in another field. > Since he’s not proposing to build Hyperloop soon, it could be viewed as clever distraction or FUD. > The thinking is that he’s rich, so he must always have something interesting to say; he can’t be a huckster when venturing outside his field. Do you think maybe there's a middle ground between infallible god and delusional crank and huckster?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

libraryofbabel 8y ago

The deeper point here - what the article is actually about but which has now been obscured by Musk's spectacular Twitter meltdown - is one about different kinds of technical culture. Silicon Valley culture has transformed our world, but it brings with it downsides and dangers. One of which is the "Engineer's Disease" - the overconfident assumption that expertise in one field gives us the ability to wade into some other domain and whip up quick technical solutions to complex problems. It's not a sin to suffer from Engineer's Disease. I fall victim to it occasionally myself. But we need to collectively get better at recognizing the symptoms, taking a deep breath and asking "do I really understand this, or do I just believe I understand it." Musk's submarine was an almost perfect example. Take some "rocket parts" (his words) and a dash of SpaceX magic dust, put some smart engineers together in a room, save the kids and take home the glory. Except it doesn't actually work that way. To a diver who had actually been in the cave, it was so clearly unworkable: it was a rigid metal cylinder and it just wasn't going to fit round tight corners. The expertise that mattered was that of the rescue divers, combined with specific knowledge of the cave - a completely different technical culture that is safety-oriented and in which untested innovation is generally a quick route to an unpleasant death. I'm just glad that the latter culture was the one that prevailed in this case. Otherwise things might have ended rather differently.

senectus1 8y ago

ffs he was doing so well... I mean his efforts were real and sincere and REQUESTED https://i.redd.it/l5cdo36ns4911.jpg https://i.redd.it/l5cdo36ns4911.jpg (sorry for the Reddit hosted image I was after a quick reference)

aaron695 8y ago

> In the case of Mr. Musk and his submarine, the Thai authorities understood that they needed to let the expert cave divers plan and direct the rescue operation Thailand is a military junta that had to be very carefully not to lose face, getting the boys out HAD to be sold as a Thailand run story internally. The things done would not have been in the boys interest. I think the Thai's went early to keep face. It's possible the cave divers backed them since the longer you leave it, the great chance of deaths. It might have matched, but there would have been more politics involved than there should have been. I'd like to know how the Thai Navy Seal diver died.

archagon 8y ago

I'm very concerned that the original post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17535801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17535801) was flagged into oblivion. It's somewhat understandable when it happens to political articles, but this is a high-profile tech CEO literally calling a heroic rescuer a pedophile. If nothing else, the event could cause significant turmoil for Tesla and his other companies. Disappointed in the HN community today.

joshmn 8y ago
Same. It's fine for Elon to disagree with someone. It's fine for anyone to disagree with anyone, frankly. It's not fine to disparage the hard work with such a tasteless and baseless accusation. I don't know how thin his skin is, but this hero will soon be just a moment in time; Elon will stick around. I'd hate to see what a balloon would do to Elon. I'm probably more irritated with Elon's comment than most people here because I know what a pedophile is. You probably don't want to know how I know either. If someone blatantly molested, caressed, or otherwise violated your middle school-aged son or daughter, you'd be livid. That's what Elon is so baselessly accusing this man of, for no reason other than because he didn't get to use his little toy on the big stage for all the world to see. Yes, there is a more general definition of pedophilia, but that definition is far lost on society. This isn't 2005 when gay "means" dumb.
- 67_45 8y ago
  He responded to rudeness with rudeness. He spent money and suffered a PR black eye in an effort to help and this guy went on CNN and told Elon to shove the submarine up his ass. That is the absolute height of rudeness -- nobody has even mentioned it. And even worse, the British ex Pat justified his juvenile comment by basically saying that the submarine was I'll conceived and that it was all a PR stunt. Saying the sub wouldn't have worked doesn't make sense because it wouldn't make Elon a bad guy and it wouldn't be a reason to hate him. And saying that this all was a PR stunt is highly, highly insulting -- basically saying that he has no soul and is taking advantage of potentially the death of a dozen young boys simply to shore up his public image a little. That is a far worse accusation than "pedo." Just because the ex Pat is not famous doesn't excuse that kind of behaviour. And just because Elon is famous doesn't mean he isn't human or justified in responding in kind to this guy. And everyone is going to pile on me for being in the Elon cult and being an Elon fan boy and on and on. It's just the way I see it, I'm not in a cult or a fan club. Don't try to brush away the logic of my words with stupid shortcuts like those. He was asked to continue on the sub by people in the water. His efforts never obstructed or inhibited any of the other, main rescue efforts in any way. Whether or not the sub would have worked is irrelevant because it was simply presented to the rescuers as a last ditch option. This entire fixation with Elon musk and the sub and frankly everything involving Elon musk is insane. Everyone is rallying against the musk "fan boys" yet the landslide majority of people are on the anti-musk bandwagon everywhere I look. And by the way, a pedo is someone with the mental illness symptom of sexual attraction to children, not someone who has molested children. Sorry if you or someone you know got molested but it's not relevant. If you want to ban pedo jokes because you have PTSD that's an entirely different conversation.

Dolanator11 8y ago

No, really, it was just a PR push. Simple as that. And his anger shows that he's frustrated for not managing to score goodboi points with the global media and public opinion. If you really only cared about the outcome (saving the kids), you'd be more modest. But he only cared about his image, hence his frustration and name-calling.

SpecialistEMT 8y ago
He acted like a little kid. Losing faith in the guy.

eric24234 8y ago

After the news Elon donated to Trump's party, i am very disappointed.