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Someone should archive all these "let me dunk on Elon's Twitter acquisition now" posts and comments. If Elon's Twitter isn't a smoking hole in the ground in a y

Someone should archive all these "let me dunk on Elon's Twitter acquisition now" posts and comments. If Elon's Twitter isn't a smoking hole in the ground in a year's time, a bunch of these comments are going to look really silly. If it actually succeeds in doing something interesting, or even just succeeds in roughly maintaining status quo, then seemingly a large majority of internet commenters really ought to examine their preconceived notions. It'll be interesting...

bcrosby95 4y ago
Ah yes, we can pass those archived posts around the campfire and have a good chortle about how wrong and naive those intensely wrong people were.
- modeless 4y ago
  Maybe that's what you like to do. Personally, I like to update my priors on whose opinions are more likely to be correct.
skippyboxedhero 4y ago
You can name any successful company, and you can point to a large group of people who said that the company was going to fail. Generally, humans have a bias towards saying things are "impossible" or "sure to fail" with limited personal understanding of the nature of that thing. Indeed, people are more expert about impossible things than possible things...they have encyclopaedic knowledge of things that don't work (this is a safety behaviour that some are more disposed to than others). I have learned, through personal experience of getting this wrong, that people will surprise you more often than your pessimism will be justified.
kweingar 4y ago
Someone should document all of the strident defense of Musk recently. If Twitter does not succeed, my guess is that many of them will attribute it to anything other than Musk’s management. Some ideas for that story might be: - Elon never had a chance because woke celebrities and activists pressured advertisers to not renew their contracts with Twitter - Twitter employees were too lazy and entitled, or maybe they intentionally sabotaged Musk’s plans for ideological reasons - The government unfairly cracked down on Twitter, which would have been desirable a year ago but is completely unnecessary now that the good guys are in charge - Well, Twitter’s revenue and userbase might have cratered, but really Elon won in the end because now it is a place for free speech. He never cared about the money, why are you so focused on the money? - Twitter might have failed but it was going to fail before Elon bought it anyway so it’s not really his fault - Elon easily could have made Twitter profitable but he realized that the cultural problems ran too deep so he turned his attention to more important projects

bcrosby95 4y ago

Ah yes, we can pass those archived posts around the campfire and have a good chortle about how wrong and naive those intensely wrong people were.

modeless 4y ago
Maybe that's what you like to do. Personally, I like to update my priors on whose opinions are more likely to be correct.

skippyboxedhero 4y ago

You can name any successful company, and you can point to a large group of people who said that the company was going to fail. Generally, humans have a bias towards saying things are "impossible" or "sure to fail" with limited personal understanding of the nature of that thing. Indeed, people are more expert about impossible things than possible things...they have encyclopaedic knowledge of things that don't work (this is a safety behaviour that some are more disposed to than others). I have learned, through personal experience of getting this wrong, that people will surprise you more often than your pessimism will be justified.

kweingar 4y ago

Someone should document all of the strident defense of Musk recently. If Twitter does not succeed, my guess is that many of them will attribute it to anything other than Musk’s management. Some ideas for that story might be: - Elon never had a chance because woke celebrities and activists pressured advertisers to not renew their contracts with Twitter - Twitter employees were too lazy and entitled, or maybe they intentionally sabotaged Musk’s plans for ideological reasons - The government unfairly cracked down on Twitter, which would have been desirable a year ago but is completely unnecessary now that the good guys are in charge - Well, Twitter’s revenue and userbase might have cratered, but really Elon won in the end because now it is a place for free speech. He never cared about the money, why are you so focused on the money? - Twitter might have failed but it was going to fail before Elon bought it anyway so it’s not really his fault - Elon easily could have made Twitter profitable but he realized that the cultural problems ran too deep so he turned his attention to more important projects