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This post is interesting to me. There's a number of subtle but vast pro-Elon takes subtly woven in, which I generally don't agree with. But also, it loathes w

This post is interesting to me. There's a number of subtle but vast pro-Elon takes subtly woven in, which I generally don't agree with. But also, it loathes what I loath, which is that we're going to be hearing about this shit for a long long long long time, and the bias will be immensely one directionally negative. Which is almost certainly true. And, probably, for a long time, incredibly fantastically well deserved. But more so: this post questions the value of these proceedings. With that, I think there is truth... although it lends upon a pro-Fog-of-War notion, it leans upon apathy, which I think are weak responses, not good reasons for de-escallating one's popcorn munching tendencies. I'd like to find a more general way to issue a call for moderation, or just a warning. The news is not bad, not slanted, but just attending to it regularly & dutifully makes us trapped in the cycle of news. There's drama here, a perpetual cliff hanger, and obvious damage & loss & redemption seems improbable (managing the world's most connected network is vastly more intricate & complicated than the much more directed & clear tasks of blasting shit into space). But most of this isn't really that important, doesn't really impact the long fate, even the dumb shit, and letting it take-over too much head-space is dangerous. What I like about this post is that it talks about the long drama. This is going to be a semi-perpetual fixture of the news cycle. I disagree with a core point which is that the SnR will be low: I think a lot of the leaks & revelations & events will be very telling, very revealing. But I'm not sure how significant or interesting or useful, as salacious & dirty as they are. But there is enormous human resilience, & our ability to account for "will it matter" varies, and this is indeed a long game. This is the most inter-connected social network on the planet, by far. Short of real collapse or major fuckery, there's probably just not much that will in fact really change, for those on the network. For all the sound and thunder, storm and stress, it's enormously questionable whether there's any power here. The only noticable change most people can even imagine is ruin, is the end, and that's enormously telling, and also semi-unlikely. What has higher likeliness to change is what part of the vast capitalist system holds the reigns, who is "in charge," but this is a story of powerlessness. All this storm & stress is mostly, for the long forseeable, kind of pointless. This post, although pro-Elon, holds some hint of that perspective. How much attention we give, how readily we strap ourselves in for the ride, & bother with this long act of determining whether anything significant at all will happen, is the realest question. It's the ultimate social question. Does it matter?

wilg 4y ago
Thanks for the insightful response! Here's some rambling thoughts about what your response made me think about. I do think it's fair enough to read it as a pro-Elon take, to some degree. I find him to be a fascinating person, because I think there are many useful things to learn about building successful and important companies like Tesla or SpaceX, and I think most of his intentions are genuine (and good and correct). I think there's a lot of cynicism and misinformation and such around his companies that is mostly noise. I don't think it's true that he is dumb or incompetent, or obsessed with money, etc. If you watch a video of him talking about rocket engine design, you can definitely tell that he knows this stuff in great enough detail to be making low-level design decisions – he's always deeply involved, so much so that it's a difficult environment for many people to work in I think. Now I also have lots of things where I disagree with him – I think he has lots of blind spots and is clearly in a right-wing info bubble (probably because of Twitter!), and I'm not sure I would try to emulate many parts of his workaholic management style, etc. But also, I don't care as much about offering a moral judgement on him as a person, I can't change him. What's interesting to me is what can be learned. What things he does that are remarkably effective, and why. And conversely, what he does that really pisses people off in such a way that they are likely to ignore those things because they were upset by unrelated things he's said. It's okay to write him off, I understand why people do that, but I want to learn from it! I would say that I have no idea whether he will be successful with Twitter, but I think he has a decent enough track record with his other companies. But that may not be enough, they are very different companies. And he really has put himself in a pickle, since he's not really acquired a company in the same way, let alone one that has such mindshare. He's certainly dragging his reputation and Twitter's reputation through the mud. But my take is also that Twitter has always been a product that is particularly well-designed to make useful discourse difficult or impossible, and to amplify drama and misinformation. And despite being a platform most people seem to dislike and doesn't have tons of users, it's currently locked in a negative-feedback loop with the news media, and disproportionately influential on the world. I think that's a really bad thing. I would be happy enough if Elon craters it, but I suppose it's also good if he fixes it somehow. It seems ultimately quite important that there is some way for society to have discussions at civilization-scale about what is important to us. Pre-Elon Twitter was not the right platform for that, so destroying it or replacing it is absolutely fine with me.

wilg 4y ago

Thanks for the insightful response! Here's some rambling thoughts about what your response made me think about. I do think it's fair enough to read it as a pro-Elon take, to some degree. I find him to be a fascinating person, because I think there are many useful things to learn about building successful and important companies like Tesla or SpaceX, and I think most of his intentions are genuine (and good and correct). I think there's a lot of cynicism and misinformation and such around his companies that is mostly noise. I don't think it's true that he is dumb or incompetent, or obsessed with money, etc. If you watch a video of him talking about rocket engine design, you can definitely tell that he knows this stuff in great enough detail to be making low-level design decisions – he's always deeply involved, so much so that it's a difficult environment for many people to work in I think. Now I also have lots of things where I disagree with him – I think he has lots of blind spots and is clearly in a right-wing info bubble (probably because of Twitter!), and I'm not sure I would try to emulate many parts of his workaholic management style, etc. But also, I don't care as much about offering a moral judgement on him as a person, I can't change him. What's interesting to me is what can be learned. What things he does that are remarkably effective, and why. And conversely, what he does that really pisses people off in such a way that they are likely to ignore those things because they were upset by unrelated things he's said. It's okay to write him off, I understand why people do that, but I want to learn from it! I would say that I have no idea whether he will be successful with Twitter, but I think he has a decent enough track record with his other companies. But that may not be enough, they are very different companies. And he really has put himself in a pickle, since he's not really acquired a company in the same way, let alone one that has such mindshare. He's certainly dragging his reputation and Twitter's reputation through the mud. But my take is also that Twitter has always been a product that is particularly well-designed to make useful discourse difficult or impossible, and to amplify drama and misinformation. And despite being a platform most people seem to dislike and doesn't have tons of users, it's currently locked in a negative-feedback loop with the news media, and disproportionately influential on the world. I think that's a really bad thing. I would be happy enough if Elon craters it, but I suppose it's also good if he fixes it somehow. It seems ultimately quite important that there is some way for society to have discussions at civilization-scale about what is important to us. Pre-Elon Twitter was not the right platform for that, so destroying it or replacing it is absolutely fine with me.