4 ms·

Having met Elon, I can tell you that he is not into anything for the fame, fortune, or glory. Those are secondary. He genuinely wants to make a difference to

by aa-jv 5y ago

Having met Elon, I can tell you that he is not into anything for the fame, fortune, or glory. Those are secondary. He genuinely wants to make a difference to humanity. A lot of us who agree with him, do so in alignment, because as individuals we also want to make a difference to humanity, and .. in so doing: we see the problem with the commons. If we do not fix the commons, it will be weaponised against us all, and that is in fact the situation. So, from a fanboix perspective, in all honesty, this seems like Elon has added a 3rd option to his list: iii) stop humans from killing each other in the meantime.

bmitc 5y ago
His actions say otherwise. Delusion and narcissism are real things.
- aa-jv 5y ago
  Got some examples? Delusion and narcissism don't get things done.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    His Twitter feed. And yes they do.
    - aa-jv 5y ago
      His Twitter feed is very, very easy to ignore. The rapid and visible progress towards the construction of a viable space age, not so much.
      - bmitc 5y ago
        Well of course you don’t think someone is delusional or a narcissist if you ignore the things they do and say.
        aa-jv 5y ago
        On the contrary, I'm not ignoring what Elon has done. He's done a lot. As for what he has to say, for every one of your tabloid moral arguments .. there are at least 25 things Elon has said, with which I would completely agree. This ideology of moral superlativity is taxing. It doesn't actually get things done. Maybe the reason Elon gets things done, is he is fine with saying stupid shit, but doing very, very good things. I mean, where does this argument lead? Does taking Elon down at a character level, produce some vital substance or circumstance, for the species? I couldn't care less what happened with the Thai submarine. And, neither should you. There is a frickin' viable space age about to happen. Can we stop killing each other so easily - and maybe just get on with bringing a peaceful resolution to the worlds resource problems? Because that's what the space dream is really all about. Infinite sky. Narcissism and Delusion don't get us there. Like, seriously.
      - ncallaway 5y ago
        "His Twitter feed is very, very easy to ignore." So I should just ignore as irrelevant the Twitter feed of the person who is currently attempting to buy Twitter? I'm sorry, but that's just doesn't make sense to me.
        aa-jv 5y ago
        Well, it remains to be understood just what will happen to Twitter, once it has been de-weaponised. (Twitter is already in the hands of the bad guys, btw. Everything people are worried that Elon will do to Twitter, has already happened.) So .. are you seriously saying you don't think Elon is going to improve Twitter? Because, factually he has already done so, just by making us have this conversation.
        ncallaway 5y ago
        > factually he has already done so, just by making us have this conversation. That's simply not a statement of fact. It's a subjective opinion. > are you seriously saying you don't think Elon is going to improve Twitter? Yes. In my opinion, Elon Musk's ownership could conceivably make Twitter worse. > Everything people are worried that Elon will do to Twitter, has already happened. This seems, honestly, like a ludicrous claim. _Everything_ that _everyone_ is worried about has already happened? Come on now...
  - isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y ago
    They do end up calling others pedophiles.
  - consumer451 5y ago
    I can jump in here for the delusions part. My knowledge of Musk comes only from watching every video and reading anything he said until about a year ago. A) FSD has been coming for a while now. The historical record seems to indicate that he was either delusional by at least years, or knowingly lying. I would bet on the prior. B) he stood in front of everyone at Boca Chica and with a straight face said that the very early Starship prototype behind him was going to orbit. Again, I actually believe maybe he thought it. Which is kinda weird/scary? To be fair, it is arguable that Musk has accomplished more good-for-the-species stuff than any one human, ever.
    - aa-jv 5y ago
      There are exactly zero examples through human history, of individuals who did enormous things for the species, although they had their extraordinary or even mundane faults. This is not to excuse Elon - or indeed any of us. The expectation that any human being is free of these kinds of moral sins, is unreasonable. And such parody is exactly why, indeed, [1] the imperative to make humans multi-planetary - i.e. with strategically enhanced survival potential, is important. Unless of course you are in the 'humans are dumb and must perish' camp. Jump you to [1], human!
    - bmitc 5y ago
      > To be fair, it is arguable that Musk has accomplished more good-for-the-species stuff than any one human, ever. Is this a serious take? He has worked in EV cars and rockets. Cars are something we should be moving away from and not towards. How have those things benefited even a fraction of the global population? Even in the U.S., inequality has continued to rise, poverty has risen, education has decreased, and several other poor indicators. Musk has used a huge portion of public funds in his companies, funds that could be used to solve these very real problems, and he’s done nothing to return value back to the general public.
      - consumer451 5y ago
        > cars are something we should be moving away from… Well there are lots of things humans should be doing, and never do. But I do believe Musk already did accomplish Tesla’s goal of accelerating electrification of the planet. Combustion is just less efficient. The ball is now rolling. Resistance is futile. I believe it is arguable that some of the more damaging climate change scenarios are possible. So anyone moving the needle there could be extremely beneficial in the long run. Musk moved the needle more than anyone in modern history, hasn’t he? I also do buy into the long-term goal of making Earth’s life spread beyond Earth. I happen to believe that complex lifeforms are extremely rare volumetrically. It does seem worth it to me, and I truly cannot think of a greater goal. SpaceX has revolutionized orbital boosters with F9 and FH already dropping costs by at least half. If/when Starship and Superheavy are up and running, then the economics of getting to space may be 10x better. On the other hand Musk is not omniscient and scares the crap out of me sometimes. The boring company plan for West LA didn’t make sense beyond paper and pencil prototyping. I got banned from multiple Tesla forums for being upset about Tesla’s proof of work crypto investment. Eventually Musk came around on that too, but why did it take so long? How did this even pass muster? The scariest thing is Neuralink though. The goal is to give humans a fighting chance to compete with a possible future AGI by greatly increasing our i/o bandwidth. Ok, but assuming AGI is created, then it’s fair to assume that it will be possible to increase the AGIs speed using various methods. Maybe we will have a chance to compete up to some point, but that time will pass as AGI develops further. We are trading a fleeting advantage against a possible future threat in exchange for giving read/write access to our brains to the governments, corporations, and NSO Groups who we all know and trust. Would love to be talked down from that one because this appears to be monumentally dumb to me right now.
  - djvdq 5y ago
    In topic of "getting things done", how are Teslas ventillators? How is his submarine for Thai boys? How is his moon tourism which he according to him should've started 4 years ago? How's his "fixxed" traffic with undedground tunnels? How is full self driving ready in two months? Elon is telling lots and lots of bullshit, but his worshippers are still telling that his different and he meant something different.
- psyc 5y ago
  The overall quality of the detractor comments says a lot too. There are a lot of generic hater comments. There are others that make no sense at all… like, Musk not wanting a PR department in his company being anti-speech. Wh… wha?? I’m still waiting for a serious and honest reason to shit on the guy.
foobarian 5y ago
I think this is already pretty clear from his work. Nobody builds Tesla or SpaceX to get famous or rich - there are much easier ways. He is truly a nerd's nerd.
- xadhominemx 5y ago
  I think it’s pretty clear Elon Musk works hard to cultivate his fame
  - foobarian 5y ago
    If we get SpaceX and Tesla out of it, then so be it.
    - aa-jv 5y ago
      15 years from now, humans are turning off their industry on Earth, and moving it all to space. 16 Psyche HQ is established, and humans are engaged in a pact of cooperation and union, against all elements, against all odds, to end all wealth. Starships drop from the sky with supplies. The whole planet is growing, there are no more reasons for the borders. We have instead, the infinite sky. We could get way, way more from it than SpaceX and Tesla.
      - boringg 5y ago
        Dude your timeline is so incredibly off which seriously invalidates your comment - not to mention your fundamental understanding of the human condition. Not even Elon has put anything out there and his timelines are more aggressive than reality (see almost all his product roll-outs).
        aa-jv 5y ago
        Oh come on, I was literally called a koolaid drinker by bootlicking warmongers. Dreamy fantasies are the only reasonable response in such circumstances. My understanding of the human condition, led me to exactly this moment, 'mmkay?
dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
Thanks for the "I drank the kool-aid" perspective.
- aa-jv 5y ago
  I mean, the facts on the ground are pretty real. If the bootlicking warmongers don't start WW3 in the meantime, we very much may make it to Mars in time to watch the shit-show from a distance. If that's not okay with you, I understand. But nobody is fixin' for some poison. We want to stay free. You know, as a species. There are zero good reasons not to put all our industry into building things in space, and returning Earth to a garden. I mean, if you wanna get weird about it...
  - burntoutfire 5y ago
    What makes you sure that WW3 won't extend to Mars?
    - aa-jv 5y ago
      Depends if we continue to build a commons, or not, I suppose.
      - dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
        So Mars will be a totalitarian state where conflict is verboten?
        aa-jv 5y ago
        I dunno, I certainly hope not. Are you gonna stay on Earth, with that attitude? Then possibly even less so, I would imagine. Pretty interesting subject though, eh? Hope the first colony isn't "USA™", you know what I mean?
        burntoutfire 5y ago
s5300 5y ago
[dead]
hooande 5y ago
nothing says "genuinely wants to make a difference to humanity" like buying the #16th ranked social network on a lark
- mountainriver 5y ago
  Except that he values free speech? What are these comments?
h2odragon 5y ago
I haven't met Elon, so I dunno if I buy your view. But I do thank you for articulating it so clearly. we've got this cultural veil of cynical nihilism that keeps us from thinking people could think like that. You're suggesting that someone is a good person? OMG no way. and he's some rich arsehole? can't be Terry Pratchett called it "crab bucket" thinking. It may be worth the risk of buying into some Musk hagiography just to have a break from the common popular despair.

by aa-jv 5y ago

bmitc 5y ago

His actions say otherwise. Delusion and narcissism are real things.

aa-jv 5y ago
Got some examples? Delusion and narcissism don't get things done.
- bmitc 5y ago
  His Twitter feed. And yes they do.
  - aa-jv 5y ago
    His Twitter feed is very, very easy to ignore. The rapid and visible progress towards the construction of a viable space age, not so much.
    - bmitc 5y ago
      Well of course you don’t think someone is delusional or a narcissist if you ignore the things they do and say.
      - aa-jv 5y ago
        On the contrary, I'm not ignoring what Elon has done. He's done a lot. As for what he has to say, for every one of your tabloid moral arguments .. there are at least 25 things Elon has said, with which I would completely agree. This ideology of moral superlativity is taxing. It doesn't actually get things done. Maybe the reason Elon gets things done, is he is fine with saying stupid shit, but doing very, very good things. I mean, where does this argument lead? Does taking Elon down at a character level, produce some vital substance or circumstance, for the species? I couldn't care less what happened with the Thai submarine. And, neither should you. There is a frickin' viable space age about to happen. Can we stop killing each other so easily - and maybe just get on with bringing a peaceful resolution to the worlds resource problems? Because that's what the space dream is really all about. Infinite sky. Narcissism and Delusion don't get us there. Like, seriously.
    - ncallaway 5y ago
      "His Twitter feed is very, very easy to ignore." So I should just ignore as irrelevant the Twitter feed of the person who is currently attempting to buy Twitter? I'm sorry, but that's just doesn't make sense to me.
      - aa-jv 5y ago
        Well, it remains to be understood just what will happen to Twitter, once it has been de-weaponised. (Twitter is already in the hands of the bad guys, btw. Everything people are worried that Elon will do to Twitter, has already happened.) So .. are you seriously saying you don't think Elon is going to improve Twitter? Because, factually he has already done so, just by making us have this conversation.
        ncallaway 5y ago
        > factually he has already done so, just by making us have this conversation. That's simply not a statement of fact. It's a subjective opinion. > are you seriously saying you don't think Elon is going to improve Twitter? Yes. In my opinion, Elon Musk's ownership could conceivably make Twitter worse. > Everything people are worried that Elon will do to Twitter, has already happened. This seems, honestly, like a ludicrous claim. _Everything_ that _everyone_ is worried about has already happened? Come on now...
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y ago
  They do end up calling others pedophiles.
- consumer451 5y ago
  I can jump in here for the delusions part. My knowledge of Musk comes only from watching every video and reading anything he said until about a year ago. A) FSD has been coming for a while now. The historical record seems to indicate that he was either delusional by at least years, or knowingly lying. I would bet on the prior. B) he stood in front of everyone at Boca Chica and with a straight face said that the very early Starship prototype behind him was going to orbit. Again, I actually believe maybe he thought it. Which is kinda weird/scary? To be fair, it is arguable that Musk has accomplished more good-for-the-species stuff than any one human, ever.
  - aa-jv 5y ago
    There are exactly zero examples through human history, of individuals who did enormous things for the species, although they had their extraordinary or even mundane faults. This is not to excuse Elon - or indeed any of us. The expectation that any human being is free of these kinds of moral sins, is unreasonable. And such parody is exactly why, indeed, [1] the imperative to make humans multi-planetary - i.e. with strategically enhanced survival potential, is important. Unless of course you are in the 'humans are dumb and must perish' camp. Jump you to [1], human!
  - bmitc 5y ago
    > To be fair, it is arguable that Musk has accomplished more good-for-the-species stuff than any one human, ever. Is this a serious take? He has worked in EV cars and rockets. Cars are something we should be moving away from and not towards. How have those things benefited even a fraction of the global population? Even in the U.S., inequality has continued to rise, poverty has risen, education has decreased, and several other poor indicators. Musk has used a huge portion of public funds in his companies, funds that could be used to solve these very real problems, and he’s done nothing to return value back to the general public.
    - consumer451 5y ago
      > cars are something we should be moving away from… Well there are lots of things humans should be doing, and never do. But I do believe Musk already did accomplish Tesla’s goal of accelerating electrification of the planet. Combustion is just less efficient. The ball is now rolling. Resistance is futile. I believe it is arguable that some of the more damaging climate change scenarios are possible. So anyone moving the needle there could be extremely beneficial in the long run. Musk moved the needle more than anyone in modern history, hasn’t he? I also do buy into the long-term goal of making Earth’s life spread beyond Earth. I happen to believe that complex lifeforms are extremely rare volumetrically. It does seem worth it to me, and I truly cannot think of a greater goal. SpaceX has revolutionized orbital boosters with F9 and FH already dropping costs by at least half. If/when Starship and Superheavy are up and running, then the economics of getting to space may be 10x better. On the other hand Musk is not omniscient and scares the crap out of me sometimes. The boring company plan for West LA didn’t make sense beyond paper and pencil prototyping. I got banned from multiple Tesla forums for being upset about Tesla’s proof of work crypto investment. Eventually Musk came around on that too, but why did it take so long? How did this even pass muster? The scariest thing is Neuralink though. The goal is to give humans a fighting chance to compete with a possible future AGI by greatly increasing our i/o bandwidth. Ok, but assuming AGI is created, then it’s fair to assume that it will be possible to increase the AGIs speed using various methods. Maybe we will have a chance to compete up to some point, but that time will pass as AGI develops further. We are trading a fleeting advantage against a possible future threat in exchange for giving read/write access to our brains to the governments, corporations, and NSO Groups who we all know and trust. Would love to be talked down from that one because this appears to be monumentally dumb to me right now.
- djvdq 5y ago
  In topic of "getting things done", how are Teslas ventillators? How is his submarine for Thai boys? How is his moon tourism which he according to him should've started 4 years ago? How's his "fixxed" traffic with undedground tunnels? How is full self driving ready in two months? Elon is telling lots and lots of bullshit, but his worshippers are still telling that his different and he meant something different.
psyc 5y ago
The overall quality of the detractor comments says a lot too. There are a lot of generic hater comments. There are others that make no sense at all… like, Musk not wanting a PR department in his company being anti-speech. Wh… wha?? I’m still waiting for a serious and honest reason to shit on the guy.

foobarian 5y ago

I think this is already pretty clear from his work. Nobody builds Tesla or SpaceX to get famous or rich - there are much easier ways. He is truly a nerd's nerd.

xadhominemx 5y ago
I think it’s pretty clear Elon Musk works hard to cultivate his fame
- foobarian 5y ago
  If we get SpaceX and Tesla out of it, then so be it.
  - aa-jv 5y ago
    15 years from now, humans are turning off their industry on Earth, and moving it all to space. 16 Psyche HQ is established, and humans are engaged in a pact of cooperation and union, against all elements, against all odds, to end all wealth. Starships drop from the sky with supplies. The whole planet is growing, there are no more reasons for the borders. We have instead, the infinite sky. We could get way, way more from it than SpaceX and Tesla.
    - boringg 5y ago
      Dude your timeline is so incredibly off which seriously invalidates your comment - not to mention your fundamental understanding of the human condition. Not even Elon has put anything out there and his timelines are more aggressive than reality (see almost all his product roll-outs).
      - aa-jv 5y ago
        Oh come on, I was literally called a koolaid drinker by bootlicking warmongers. Dreamy fantasies are the only reasonable response in such circumstances. My understanding of the human condition, led me to exactly this moment, 'mmkay?

dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago

Thanks for the "I drank the kool-aid" perspective.

aa-jv 5y ago
I mean, the facts on the ground are pretty real. If the bootlicking warmongers don't start WW3 in the meantime, we very much may make it to Mars in time to watch the shit-show from a distance. If that's not okay with you, I understand. But nobody is fixin' for some poison. We want to stay free. You know, as a species. There are zero good reasons not to put all our industry into building things in space, and returning Earth to a garden. I mean, if you wanna get weird about it...
- burntoutfire 5y ago
  What makes you sure that WW3 won't extend to Mars?
  - aa-jv 5y ago
    Depends if we continue to build a commons, or not, I suppose.
    - dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
      So Mars will be a totalitarian state where conflict is verboten?
      - aa-jv 5y ago
        I dunno, I certainly hope not. Are you gonna stay on Earth, with that attitude? Then possibly even less so, I would imagine. Pretty interesting subject though, eh? Hope the first colony isn't "USA™", you know what I mean?
        burntoutfire 5y ago

s5300 5y ago

[dead]

hooande 5y ago

nothing says "genuinely wants to make a difference to humanity" like buying the #16th ranked social network on a lark

mountainriver 5y ago
Except that he values free speech? What are these comments?

h2odragon 5y ago

I haven't met Elon, so I dunno if I buy your view. But I do thank you for articulating it so clearly. we've got this cultural veil of cynical nihilism that keeps us from thinking people could think like that. You're suggesting that someone is a good person? OMG no way. and he's some rich arsehole? can't be Terry Pratchett called it "crab bucket" thinking. It may be worth the risk of buying into some Musk hagiography just to have a break from the common popular despair.