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I just really don’t understand how this whole situation has been this badly mismanaged. I fully believe his original offer to be a troll, but then he got stuck

I just really don’t understand how this whole situation has been this badly mismanaged. I fully believe his original offer to be a troll, but then he got stuck with it, but he has since so mismanaged this entire affair that I simply can’t understand how. Is the guy surrounding himself with idiotic advisers? Has he just gotten so far from reality that he can’t make reasonable predictions? Has he gone off some meds? It just makes no sense.

Traubenfuchs 4y ago
> I just really don’t understand how this whole situation has been this badly mismanaged. You and almost the whole world. There are still some people left believing him to play some kind of genius 4D chess. Same thing happens for Trump and Ye.
- taffronaut 4y ago
  Maybe Thiel is playing the 4D chess in the run up to 2024 and Musk is on board as a very effective distraction who thinks he's the central player.
  - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
    Ever since thiel datamined humanitys true nature out of facebooks data he and all his associated are in full catastrophe fallback mode. If a decline to authoriatarian rule can not be prevented, at least make it controlled. Its also a visible background pattern in almost all larger tech investment - build technology that can not be used for exponential damage in the wrong hands and make humanity resilient to catastrophic change. Example: Youtube videos containg tutorials that survive all of humanity dieing of that knew a certain technology.
- squokko 4y ago
  But the clear difference is that Musk is very clearly an extremely high IQ guy. Trump and Ye have incredible skills in their domain but Musk has really high general intelligence, but is clearly fucking this up beyond anyone's expectations.
  - agubelu 4y ago
    I don't know if that is the case, but if it is, it's a perfect example of the difference between intelligence and wisdom.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    IQ is about processing speed, not processing quality. If you're operating outside of your competence with limited awareness and inaccurate contextual assumptions you can be super-smart and still make incredibly stupid decisions.
    - skissane 4y ago
      > IQ is about processing speed That’s not true-processing speed is just one component of IQ. Some people can have below average processing speed but be in the gifted range in other IQ components. (e.g. on WISC-V, high GAI but low PSI). It is actually reasonably common among people who are gifted but also have ADHD/ASD/OCD/etc
    - mejutoco 4y ago
      IQ is about passing IQ tests.
  - otikik 4y ago
    Efficiency vs effectiveness. Different kinds of intelligence.
  - syrgian 4y ago
    Do you have any indisputable example of this? (as in quick, smart reasoning in real time, so it could not have been written by someone else). It makes sense to me that he would be smart as in raw reasoning capacity, but all the content I have been linked him to made him look pretty normal or even less smart than the average career engineer.
    - theonething 4y ago
      > When I met Elon it was apparent to me that although he had a scientific mind and he understood scientific principles, he did not know anything about rockets. Nothing. That was in 2001. By 2007 he knew everything about rockets - he really knew everything, in detail. You have to put some serious study in to know as much about rockets as he knows now. This doesn't come just from hanging out with people. Robert Zubrin - aerospace engineer > Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction. He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy. He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years. Kevin Watson - Head of Avionics, Launcher https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  It’s not necessarily 4D chess so much as “he doesn’t care at all about that which I think is important”. I think it’s important not to piss off your existing and upcoming workforce. He doesn’t. Is he obviously wrong? Time will tell.
Sakos 4y ago
From the guy who managed to launch Starlink and currently runs the most successful/effective space launch provider, it's so bizarre seeing him fumble Twitter so badly. Has something changed about him or has he always been this way and the space industry was just less conducive to drawing out his batshit crazy?
- dbt00 4y ago
  He's always been bad at dealing with people. Twitter isn't a technology company, it's a people company.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  It's a fundamentally different kind of company. You can bang the desk and yell at engineers when you're building rockets, because ultimately customers only care about the tech. And there will always be engineers who don't care about abuse as long as they get to Build Cool Stuff. With something like Twitter the tech is more or less invisible. Users care about trust and relationships, and so do many of the engineers. Musk isn't just utterly clueless about those, he's hostile to the culture that values them. This is not going to end well. Odds are excellent it's going to turn into another of those legendary loss-making acquisitions like AOL and MySpace.
- pg314 4y ago
  >From the guy who managed to launch Starlink and currently runs the most successful/effective space launch provider, He is not running SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell is. He’s just the part-time CEO, very adept at self-promoting.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    Shotwell must be a fucking wizard to be running SpaceX so well despite Elon then.
- kibwen 4y ago
  Why are we giving Musk credit for these things? We don't give Jobs credit for the original technical success of Apple; that goes to Woz. Somewhere behind the scenes at SpaceX there's one or more people analogous to Woz who get all the actual work done. Musk's entire contribution is just to shitpost and posture for the techbros. He's not a technologist, he's not a programmer, he's not an engineer, he's not a physicist, he's not a rocket scientist, he's just a blowhard with a cult following.
throwaway4736 4y ago
Easy. He’s an overrated, petulant child who no longer has anyone around that is willing to tell him no.
SkyMarshal 4y ago
Yeah I'm thinking the same. Even without the screwups, it's an unbelievable waste of $44billion dollars. He could have invested that in a nuclear fusion startup or something else that would advance his dual goals of clean energy and a multi-planet species (and almost certainly make better ROI than Twitter). Instead through a series of bizarre misteps he spends that on a useless vanity project that will distract him from his important companies, and then proceeds to fuck it up in just about every conceivable way. Like, dude...
- captainmuon 4y ago
  Well, see it this way, the old owners of Twitter now have all that money. Maybe they'll invest in something interesting? The only difference is that it won't be controlled by an unstable Elon Musk. (TBH I'm not even sure who the previous owners were...)
  - bitecode 4y ago
    It was publicly traded, with Vanguard, Morgan Stanley and Black Rock owning the largest holdings. Source: https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/28/who-owned-twitter-before-elon-musk-timeline-of-ownership-17655892/ https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/28/who-owned-twitter-before-elon...
    - SkyMarshal 4y ago
      I'm sure they'll do something valuable with it after they finish buying back their own shares, issuing new subprime debt securities, and propping up the CCP.
- eeiopo 4y ago
  > that would advance his dual goals of clean energy and a multi-planet species From what I've observed over the years, his real goal is to receive attention from as many people as possible. I doubt his sincerity on his stated goals, this is most likely just self-marketing bullshittery.
- lm28469 4y ago
garbagetime 4y ago
How has he mismanaged it?
- rippercushions 4y ago
  I believe the previous poster is referring to the acquisition process, not Twitter itself. Although the past week hasn't been exactly a promising start.
- simonh 4y ago
  Firstly by signing a contract, changing his mind and then being forced to fulfil the contract by a court. By alienating a lot of prominent Tweeters and advertisers. Now by sacking a load of people it turns out he needs.
  - garbagetime 4y ago
    How many prominent users have left the platform? What will advertising revenue look like going forward? How many employees have been asked to return, how needed are they, and was it mismanagement or just an expected outcome of necessary, decisive decision making?
    - thirdvect0r 4y ago
      Obvious sealioning
      - garbagetime 4y ago
        I'm sad that you took my comment that way. In fact I'm simply trying to suggest that many people's views in this thread on Elon's management of Twitter are severely underdetermined by the evidence.
        2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
        I think it’s clear that this is definitely a waste of 44billion. What a staggering amount of money. But I think Twitter has more leeway than people think. First of all, the vast majority aren’t just going to move. The celebrities won’t because their followers are still on it. Everyone else won’t because by all accounts Mastodon isn’t as easy to signup with as twitter (I’ve not tried, and don’t care enough to to). And they rest of us just kinda read twitter and frankly don’t care if it crashes and burns. All the big accounts I follow, simply started cross posting. So I expect nothing much to happen. However given how much attention Twitter gets, even appearing in the news, and possibly swaying public opinion, I might be eating my words if it maintains popularity but turns into a dumpster fire.
bearmode 4y ago
>I just really don’t understand how this whole situation has been this badly mismanaged. I fully believe his original offer to be a troll You don't make a formal offer as a troll He's always been an awful person; the cult that has developed around him just inflated his ego. Here's the result.
- smcl 4y ago
  Well you or I wouldn't make a formal offer as a troll, but someone like Elon Musk might believe they could pull off something like formally offering to buy a company for an epic-bacon-lol share price and then pull out before having to follow through (and god knows he tried to)

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

> I just really don’t understand how this whole situation has been this badly mismanaged. You and almost the whole world. There are still some people left believing him to play some kind of genius 4D chess. Same thing happens for Trump and Ye.

taffronaut 4y ago
Maybe Thiel is playing the 4D chess in the run up to 2024 and Musk is on board as a very effective distraction who thinks he's the central player.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  Ever since thiel datamined humanitys true nature out of facebooks data he and all his associated are in full catastrophe fallback mode. If a decline to authoriatarian rule can not be prevented, at least make it controlled. Its also a visible background pattern in almost all larger tech investment - build technology that can not be used for exponential damage in the wrong hands and make humanity resilient to catastrophic change. Example: Youtube videos containg tutorials that survive all of humanity dieing of that knew a certain technology.
squokko 4y ago
But the clear difference is that Musk is very clearly an extremely high IQ guy. Trump and Ye have incredible skills in their domain but Musk has really high general intelligence, but is clearly fucking this up beyond anyone's expectations.
- agubelu 4y ago
  I don't know if that is the case, but if it is, it's a perfect example of the difference between intelligence and wisdom.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  IQ is about processing speed, not processing quality. If you're operating outside of your competence with limited awareness and inaccurate contextual assumptions you can be super-smart and still make incredibly stupid decisions.
  - skissane 4y ago
    > IQ is about processing speed That’s not true-processing speed is just one component of IQ. Some people can have below average processing speed but be in the gifted range in other IQ components. (e.g. on WISC-V, high GAI but low PSI). It is actually reasonably common among people who are gifted but also have ADHD/ASD/OCD/etc
  - mejutoco 4y ago
    IQ is about passing IQ tests.
- otikik 4y ago
  Efficiency vs effectiveness. Different kinds of intelligence.
- syrgian 4y ago
  Do you have any indisputable example of this? (as in quick, smart reasoning in real time, so it could not have been written by someone else). It makes sense to me that he would be smart as in raw reasoning capacity, but all the content I have been linked him to made him look pretty normal or even less smart than the average career engineer.
  - theonething 4y ago
    > When I met Elon it was apparent to me that although he had a scientific mind and he understood scientific principles, he did not know anything about rockets. Nothing. That was in 2001. By 2007 he knew everything about rockets - he really knew everything, in detail. You have to put some serious study in to know as much about rockets as he knows now. This doesn't come just from hanging out with people. Robert Zubrin - aerospace engineer > Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction. He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy. He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years. Kevin Watson - Head of Avionics, Launcher https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
unsupp0rted 4y ago
It’s not necessarily 4D chess so much as “he doesn’t care at all about that which I think is important”. I think it’s important not to piss off your existing and upcoming workforce. He doesn’t. Is he obviously wrong? Time will tell.

Sakos 4y ago

From the guy who managed to launch Starlink and currently runs the most successful/effective space launch provider, it's so bizarre seeing him fumble Twitter so badly. Has something changed about him or has he always been this way and the space industry was just less conducive to drawing out his batshit crazy?

dbt00 4y ago
He's always been bad at dealing with people. Twitter isn't a technology company, it's a people company.
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
It's a fundamentally different kind of company. You can bang the desk and yell at engineers when you're building rockets, because ultimately customers only care about the tech. And there will always be engineers who don't care about abuse as long as they get to Build Cool Stuff. With something like Twitter the tech is more or less invisible. Users care about trust and relationships, and so do many of the engineers. Musk isn't just utterly clueless about those, he's hostile to the culture that values them. This is not going to end well. Odds are excellent it's going to turn into another of those legendary loss-making acquisitions like AOL and MySpace.
pg314 4y ago
>From the guy who managed to launch Starlink and currently runs the most successful/effective space launch provider, He is not running SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell is. He’s just the part-time CEO, very adept at self-promoting.
- Sakos 4y ago
  Shotwell must be a fucking wizard to be running SpaceX so well despite Elon then.
kibwen 4y ago
Why are we giving Musk credit for these things? We don't give Jobs credit for the original technical success of Apple; that goes to Woz. Somewhere behind the scenes at SpaceX there's one or more people analogous to Woz who get all the actual work done. Musk's entire contribution is just to shitpost and posture for the techbros. He's not a technologist, he's not a programmer, he's not an engineer, he's not a physicist, he's not a rocket scientist, he's just a blowhard with a cult following.

throwaway4736 4y ago

Easy. He’s an overrated, petulant child who no longer has anyone around that is willing to tell him no.

SkyMarshal 4y ago

Yeah I'm thinking the same. Even without the screwups, it's an unbelievable waste of $44billion dollars. He could have invested that in a nuclear fusion startup or something else that would advance his dual goals of clean energy and a multi-planet species (and almost certainly make better ROI than Twitter). Instead through a series of bizarre misteps he spends that on a useless vanity project that will distract him from his important companies, and then proceeds to fuck it up in just about every conceivable way. Like, dude...

captainmuon 4y ago
Well, see it this way, the old owners of Twitter now have all that money. Maybe they'll invest in something interesting? The only difference is that it won't be controlled by an unstable Elon Musk. (TBH I'm not even sure who the previous owners were...)
- bitecode 4y ago
  It was publicly traded, with Vanguard, Morgan Stanley and Black Rock owning the largest holdings. Source: https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/28/who-owned-twitter-before-elon-musk-timeline-of-ownership-17655892/ https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/28/who-owned-twitter-before-elon...
  - SkyMarshal 4y ago
    I'm sure they'll do something valuable with it after they finish buying back their own shares, issuing new subprime debt securities, and propping up the CCP.
eeiopo 4y ago
> that would advance his dual goals of clean energy and a multi-planet species From what I've observed over the years, his real goal is to receive attention from as many people as possible. I doubt his sincerity on his stated goals, this is most likely just self-marketing bullshittery.
lm28469 4y ago

garbagetime 4y ago

How has he mismanaged it?

rippercushions 4y ago
I believe the previous poster is referring to the acquisition process, not Twitter itself. Although the past week hasn't been exactly a promising start.
simonh 4y ago
Firstly by signing a contract, changing his mind and then being forced to fulfil the contract by a court. By alienating a lot of prominent Tweeters and advertisers. Now by sacking a load of people it turns out he needs.
- garbagetime 4y ago
  How many prominent users have left the platform? What will advertising revenue look like going forward? How many employees have been asked to return, how needed are they, and was it mismanagement or just an expected outcome of necessary, decisive decision making?
  - thirdvect0r 4y ago
    Obvious sealioning
    - garbagetime 4y ago
      I'm sad that you took my comment that way. In fact I'm simply trying to suggest that many people's views in this thread on Elon's management of Twitter are severely underdetermined by the evidence.
      - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
        I think it’s clear that this is definitely a waste of 44billion. What a staggering amount of money. But I think Twitter has more leeway than people think. First of all, the vast majority aren’t just going to move. The celebrities won’t because their followers are still on it. Everyone else won’t because by all accounts Mastodon isn’t as easy to signup with as twitter (I’ve not tried, and don’t care enough to to). And they rest of us just kinda read twitter and frankly don’t care if it crashes and burns. All the big accounts I follow, simply started cross posting. So I expect nothing much to happen. However given how much attention Twitter gets, even appearing in the news, and possibly swaying public opinion, I might be eating my words if it maintains popularity but turns into a dumpster fire.

bearmode 4y ago

>I just really don’t understand how this whole situation has been this badly mismanaged. I fully believe his original offer to be a troll You don't make a formal offer as a troll He's always been an awful person; the cult that has developed around him just inflated his ego. Here's the result.

smcl 4y ago
Well you or I wouldn't make a formal offer as a troll, but someone like Elon Musk might believe they could pull off something like formally offering to buy a company for an epic-bacon-lol share price and then pull out before having to follow through (and god knows he tried to)