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Why are we so obsessed with loving or hating him. Both amount to celebrity worship. We enable the drama which feeds off both the love AND the hate. I posit th

Why are we so obsessed with loving or hating him. Both amount to celebrity worship. We enable the drama which feeds off both the love AND the hate. I posit that mature intelligent people don't care about Elon. Our rallying for or railing against him, is an expression of our own narcissism, as if our individual opinions of him change literally anything in the world. People need to grow up and focus on their own lives and changing things within their power.

ausbah 4y ago
musk is kinda the closet thing to a celebrity there is in the tech scene
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Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
I very much agree with all you said, but it's also a way to find likeminded people. If I discuss with somebody and they agree with me that Musk is a conman and a cult leader, chances are they have the same mental framework around other broader things such as how SV has become a hotspot for cults. How maybe it's time to get out of such hotspot for cults, how maybe the template for success isn't inflating a financial bubble such as Tesla but going old school like Microsoft, without raising any money, going straight to building products and attack Goliath without fear like they did with IBM, not in the press but in the marketplace.
Jach 4y ago
I mostly agree with this, and would add that thoughts on Elon make a great Rorschach test (and a less great but still interesting test on what bits of misinformation have stuck to a person). But I disagree with the "enlightened disinterested middle" prescription. A mature intelligent person can love and hate and be disinterested in things (and people), too, and regardless of how other people think (or don't think) about the thing or person. There's an old copypasta going around again that implicitly makes this point at least for liking -- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/if-x-has-a-million-fans-im-one-of-them https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/if-x-has-a-million-fans-im-on... -- a mature intelligent person should be able to have their likes and dislikes be mostly independent of what others think. (My own bias is somewhat contrarian, I notice myself irrationally starting to like something less if it becomes more popular. Sometimes I can justify it more rationally by saying that popularity changed the thing -- our opinions are part of our brains and thus are part of the world and can indeed sometimes affect the world even beyond our brains, effects are more likely when more brains share opinions -- and I like the thing it became less, or even actively dislike it, without having to diminish my liking of what used to be. Sometimes I realize I'm being irrational, notice my feelings aren't what I want them to be, and attempt to correct them (sometimes towards disinterest!). Sometimes I don't care. But the correct thing is not necessarily disinterest, nor a more extreme stance I once thought which was abandoning my likes and other emotions altogether.)

ausbah 4y ago

musk is kinda the closet thing to a celebrity there is in the tech scene

deleted 4y ago
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Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago

I very much agree with all you said, but it's also a way to find likeminded people. If I discuss with somebody and they agree with me that Musk is a conman and a cult leader, chances are they have the same mental framework around other broader things such as how SV has become a hotspot for cults. How maybe it's time to get out of such hotspot for cults, how maybe the template for success isn't inflating a financial bubble such as Tesla but going old school like Microsoft, without raising any money, going straight to building products and attack Goliath without fear like they did with IBM, not in the press but in the marketplace.

Jach 4y ago

I mostly agree with this, and would add that thoughts on Elon make a great Rorschach test (and a less great but still interesting test on what bits of misinformation have stuck to a person). But I disagree with the "enlightened disinterested middle" prescription. A mature intelligent person can love and hate and be disinterested in things (and people), too, and regardless of how other people think (or don't think) about the thing or person. There's an old copypasta going around again that implicitly makes this point at least for liking -- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/if-x-has-a-million-fans-im-one-of-them https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/if-x-has-a-million-fans-im-on... -- a mature intelligent person should be able to have their likes and dislikes be mostly independent of what others think. (My own bias is somewhat contrarian, I notice myself irrationally starting to like something less if it becomes more popular. Sometimes I can justify it more rationally by saying that popularity changed the thing -- our opinions are part of our brains and thus are part of the world and can indeed sometimes affect the world even beyond our brains, effects are more likely when more brains share opinions -- and I like the thing it became less, or even actively dislike it, without having to diminish my liking of what used to be. Sometimes I realize I'm being irrational, notice my feelings aren't what I want them to be, and attempt to correct them (sometimes towards disinterest!). Sometimes I don't care. But the correct thing is not necessarily disinterest, nor a more extreme stance I once thought which was abandoning my likes and other emotions altogether.)