4 ms·

I also agree he's a good (master?) business man. But did he have to be so cruel? Post this picture https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592618665933156352 http

by inerte 4y ago

I also agree he's a good (master?) business man. But did he have to be so cruel? Post this picture https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592618665933156352 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592618665933156352 while 5k people lost their jobs? And all the other stuff... I mean... it's one thing to "tell it like it is", which is a trait a lot of people admire. But he's just doing a bunch of stuff that deep down only abominable human beings would think and let alone act on it.

pjc50 4y ago
"The cruelty is the point". There's an increasingly blunt divide these days between people who think cruelty is a good signal because it's in some way "realistic", and people who think avoidable suffering is bad and should be avoided. This is almost exactly the "woke"/"antiwoke" split.
- notacoward 4y ago
  Thank you for making this point. It's basically confusing correlation with causation, or even reversing causation. Cargo cult thinking. Positive long term change often causes shorter term harm to some people, and this causes shorter term harm to some people, so this must be positive long term change. Poking at a wound, or exercising to overload, precisely because it hurts, because the hurt has become overly associated with progress. Some people make the error innocently. Others use it as an excuse, and make up fancy terms like "technocracy" (Musk's grandfather) or "longtermism" (Musk himself) to dress up the rationalization. Really, it's about essentializing harm itself.
  - inerte 4y ago
    Thank you both pjc50 and notacoward because I heard the phrase "cruelty is the point" and I've always interpreted as the person doing the cruelty enjoys what they do, as if the cruelty by itself is the goal, not a means to an end. This might map with the idea how the military first needs to break a person to rebuild them in something that's capable of doing what society has taught us to never do (namely, kill others), and more strongly to what I've been increasingly hearing lately in the business world which is "antifragility". In no way I am equating killing with building resilient systems, but I can see a thread connecting them when someone thinks that cruelty can produce better and improved new behaviors or systems.
    - notacoward 4y ago
      You're completely welcome and I'm happy that you saw some value in it. Your military-training analogy is good too. "That which does not kill us makes us stronger" is a powerful concept, but comes with many caveats that are usually overlooked. It is the ability to heal and learn and adapt that is most essential, not the need to challenge, and unfortunately the Nietzschean expression obscures that. The ways in which his ideas were later used should also serve as a stark warning of how dangerous that particular line of thinking can be.

by inerte 4y ago

pjc50 4y ago

"The cruelty is the point". There's an increasingly blunt divide these days between people who think cruelty is a good signal because it's in some way "realistic", and people who think avoidable suffering is bad and should be avoided. This is almost exactly the "woke"/"antiwoke" split.

notacoward 4y ago
Thank you for making this point. It's basically confusing correlation with causation, or even reversing causation. Cargo cult thinking. Positive long term change often causes shorter term harm to some people, and this causes shorter term harm to some people, so this must be positive long term change. Poking at a wound, or exercising to overload, precisely because it hurts, because the hurt has become overly associated with progress. Some people make the error innocently. Others use it as an excuse, and make up fancy terms like "technocracy" (Musk's grandfather) or "longtermism" (Musk himself) to dress up the rationalization. Really, it's about essentializing harm itself.
- inerte 4y ago
  Thank you both pjc50 and notacoward because I heard the phrase "cruelty is the point" and I've always interpreted as the person doing the cruelty enjoys what they do, as if the cruelty by itself is the goal, not a means to an end. This might map with the idea how the military first needs to break a person to rebuild them in something that's capable of doing what society has taught us to never do (namely, kill others), and more strongly to what I've been increasingly hearing lately in the business world which is "antifragility". In no way I am equating killing with building resilient systems, but I can see a thread connecting them when someone thinks that cruelty can produce better and improved new behaviors or systems.
  - notacoward 4y ago
    You're completely welcome and I'm happy that you saw some value in it. Your military-training analogy is good too. "That which does not kill us makes us stronger" is a powerful concept, but comes with many caveats that are usually overlooked. It is the ability to heal and learn and adapt that is most essential, not the need to challenge, and unfortunately the Nietzschean expression obscures that. The ways in which his ideas were later used should also serve as a stark warning of how dangerous that particular line of thinking can be.