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The Boring Conservatism of Elon Musk
- friend_and_foe 4y agoThe boring predictability of this article.
- vt85 4y ago
- thinkmcfly 4y ago[flagged]
- pixl97 4y agoI think the term 'free speech absolutism' makes much more sense if you read it as follows. "My free speech is absolute (not yours)."
- awb 4y agoIt makes even more sense if you read it as idealism.
- pixl97 4y agoIdealism works much better when you have conviction of conscious. If you say 'all people should be free' and then proceed to buy slaves and beat them, it would appear that not only are your words worthless, but your intent is to take focus off your own bad behavior and put it on others. Idealism comes with costs. Musk wants to bear none of them. Absolute free speech would also include me being able to say exactly where Musk is right now. Musk use, the excuse, "Oh no I could get hurt if people do that". Idealism is now in direct conflict with reality, so quickly and so obviously. And this is what makes free speech absolutism one of the dumbest ideologies of all time.
- awb 4y agoIdealism is almost always in direct conflict with reality. Lots of world views are great on paper and flawed in practice.
- pixl97 4y agoAfter the writing of this article Twitter has gone on to ban a number of journalist under the same 'rule'. It appears governments in the EU are going to further use Musks outburst to further regulate and fine Twitter, likely to the point of non-viability in those nations.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dionian 4y ago“ Musk has revealed himself to be conservative, ” This is a nakedly partisan comment and “conservative” is code word for “dissenting from the regime”. I personally like people who stand up to the regime and support civil rights.
- defterGoose 4y agoUhhh, the meaning of conservative in a political context is much closer to "agrees with the status quo at some point in (past)U(present)"
- klyrs 4y agoHe supports the rights of oligarchs, anyway... but that's not really "standing up to the regime," is it?
- the_other 4y agoCan you provide a definition of “the regime” and examples of how it infringes civial rights?
- arrakeen 4y ago> “conservative” is code word for “dissenting from the regime” TFA literally provides an axiomatic definition of "conservative" from which to interpret the author's statement. and spoiler alert: it does not mean “dissenting from the regime” now, whether or not to accept the axiom as truth is beyond the scope of the quoted criticism
- 082349872349872 4y agoIn an effort to make this a little less political and a little more geeky: Say we have a binary relation R (so we write x R y to say x is related to y by R) Say this relation is also transitive, so whenever x R y and y R z we always have that x R z We notice transitivity can be extended over N-hops, not just 2. So what is 0-hop transitivity? We usually call that reflexivity: we always have that x R x Now we come to the crux: is our relation symmetric, or antisymmetric, or something else? Ignoring the third case; with an antisymmetric relation, we have either x R y xor y R x, but never both; with a symmetric relation whenever we have x R y we also always have y R x. Crudely put, the cartoon conservative wants more antisymmetric relations, and the cartoon progressive wants more symmetric relations. Before the 1960s, many european languages were antisymmetric in 2nd person pronouns: the superior would say tu/du to the inferior; the inferior would say vous/Sie to the superior. ([Edit:Counter example]: one says "thou" and not "you" to God) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T–V_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T–V_distinction Since the 1960s, we've moved to a symmetric use of these pronouns. The V form is more formal, but if one party uses vous/Sie the other party will mirror it. Similarly the T form is more informal, and if a company (such as McDo) addresses their customers as tu/du, they'd be fools to think they will be addressed in return as anything else. Lagniappe: cf "Weak Components Revived" on https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news.html for a discussion of structure in graphs of the third kind, having a mix of symmetric and antisymmetric relations.
- DoctorOW 4y ago> In an effort to make this a little less political and a little more geeky Is there a demand for essays like this? I've been playing around with an idea where I take some of the more talked about legislation and present a semi-neutral deep dive into the actual facts of the matter.
- f_devd 4y agoI think it depends on the structure, I find the structure of GP always very engaging: X (technical or not) can be represented as structure Y (math/cs). Side note: I suppose this would be the informal version of type/category theory?
- coding123 4y agoMusk is not conservative. He's just a democrat stuck in the 1990s like pretty much everyone else. This is how I see it, the year you identify as the best decade (and you were a democrat in that decade), reveals your new politics: 1980 Democrats are FAR RIGHT today (and clearly now republican). 1990 Democrats are Right today (and now republican). 2000 Democrats are moderate today (and maybe republican, independent or democrat) 2010 Democrats are Left today (and likely still democrat) 2020 Democrats are FAR LEFT. Conservatives are similar, but you just shift them two sections right, so 1990 Republicans are FAR FAR RIGHT now. In 50 years we'll have very old trans men and women on the FAR RIGHT complaining that back in their day only natural Human beings could get married after changing genders, and that it should be illegal to marry a human that started as a Frog then a pig then a human through genetic manipulation. edited to make it more clear, the year + politics of that year => spits out your politics today.
- discreteevent 4y agoIt quotes someone who says a tweet contained "stark cruelty" because it indirectly insults a group of people. Then characterises the stark cruelty as being "Dad level" Sounds like a cesspool alright.
- pschuegr 4y agoI have no idea what you're trying to say.
- programmarchy 4y agoEveryone trying to understand Musk's motivations reminds me of the parable of the Blind Men and an Elephant [1]. Yes, he is engaging the right wing, including the reactionary factions, but that hardly makes him a conservative. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
- braingenious 4y ago> What would make him a conservative other than taking conservative actions? To his fans, nothing. Nothing at all could convince his fans that he’s doing anything other than playing infinite-dimensional chess against whom the only true possible opponent could be the godhead itself. It’s genuinely funny watching full-grown adults convince themselves that Benevolent Doctor Doom really exists and cares about them.
- programmarchy 4y agoI’m not convinced of anything but brain dead takes like “he’s a conservative!” are not going to help identify his underlying motivations.
- braingenious 4y agoAh yes, it is “brain dead” to say “The guy who is telling people to vote for republicans is a conservative.” While that would make sense when describing literally anybody else, since it is Elon we must consult the ancient runes and see what the prophecy portends for the messiah.
- programmarchy 4y agoYes, taking statements out of context and using them to paint a one-dimensional image of a person, whether it's Elon Musk or anybody else, is brain dead.
- roughly 4y agoThe absolute saddest thing in the world is that he spends any time at all on Twitter. My god, the field of possibilities for how to spend his free time is absolutely limitless - the man could spend a billion dollars a year on personal entertainment and growth, on doing literally anything his heart desires, and die the richest man on the planet. He could visit every corner of the globe, talk with anyone on the planet, see any performance up close and personal, he could build magnificent buildings, found incredible institutions, sponsor whole art movements. He could die on the moon. The possibilities for this man are limited only by the actual possible, and he’s got enough money that on a reasonable timescale even that’s malleable. But what’s he doing instead? He’s tweeting “my pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.” He’s engaged in the shittiest, lowest quality, most horseshit expression of whatever passes for politics on Twitter, on which he spends a horrifying amount of time. Is this what it’s like to watch an artist die slowly from a heroine addiction? Just an incredible breadth of potential, slowly wasting itself in the most obscene and depressing fashion, and all that possibility dying with it. What a goddamn tragedy.
- WXLCKNO 4y ago> He could die on the moon Pretty crazy that this is accurate. This man could choose to go to the moon. To die or not would be up to him.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago> go to the moon. To die or not would be up to him The moon is an extremely harsh environment. Dying fairly soon is the default outcome. If a billionaire wanted to die on the moon, they could do that within maybe 5 years of announcing the plan. For EM, less time than that, as his personal space program already exists. Realistic plans to survive in a small metal box on the moon for some time, might take longer.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoIn fact he's stated that his ambition is to die on Mars. And he spent 20 solid years working towards that -- SpaceX the rockets and Tesla has given him the financial ability. And this year his destruction of the TSLA stock value is throwing it away.
- cs702 4y agoI'm not sure I'd agree with the OP, mainly because it's still seems too early to judge the actions of Musk and his team. They're just starting to figure out how the heck they're going to turn around Twitter into a sustainable business -- not exactly an easy task! Everything Twitter does is surely up-for-internal-debate currently. I'd wait to pass judgment until things start stabilizing. That said, I find the definition of conservatism quoted by the OP insightful: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." The opposite of that is clearly worthwhile: We want laws that protect everyone because they bind everyone.
- pixl97 4y agoThe linked site as a further post about this. https://kottke.org/21/02/conservatism-and-who-the-law-protects https://kottke.org/21/02/conservatism-and-who-the-law-protec... And the original blog post on the topic. https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288 https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...
- cs702 4y agoThanks! I just submitted it as an OP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34017545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34017545
- jkingsbery 4y agoI'm not sure how a quote by a musical composer about how he imagines conservatives must think is very helpful or convincing. I agree that "the opposite is clearly worthwhile," but most conservatives I've read also agree. Of course, in some corners the word "conservative" has become meaningless, it just means "person I don't like."
- cs702 4y ago> I'm not sure how a quote by a musical composer about how he imagines conservatives must think is very helpful or convincing I don't think the OP claims to know what anyone is thinking. Please don't attack a straw-man. If your goal is to prove the OP wrong, you could try to find examples that contradict it. (Off the top of my head, I couldn't find any examples that contradict it.)
- draw_down 4y ago
- joemazerino 4y agoDon't like Twitter? Go start your own service. How does the Left feel about shadowbans and censorship now.
- pixl97 4y agoWhat an inane take. "The left is bad because they ban!" 'takes power' "I can ban anyone I want, feel my ultimate power!" At the end of the day any and every service has to ban people, the services simply won't work unless that happens. It takes a particular kind of moral bankruptcy and black and white thinking to be unable to differentiate between different actions and associate equal agency between them.
- dpkirchner 4y agoWe can't hold self-defined conservatives/people with no internal consistency to any standards. We can't expect them to feel any perform any introspection, either. That's the core to their whole being. (Corrected a typo)
- joemazerino 4y agoI don't see any difference between Musk banning journalists stalking him and Twitter banning journalists for reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop or censoring COVID information. It is all partisanship.
- nickthegreek 4y agoDo you feel like Musk is living up to promises he made or is that not important to you? Seems like to many, owning the libs is more important than being principled.
- mustacheemperor 4y agoI think plenty of people are doing that already with Mastodon. Of course, that alternative will be harder for Twitter users to discover now that the free speech absolutists have suspended the Mastodon twitter account and automatically flagged all Mastodon links for removal.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago> It’s a private company and he has every right to do so, but for the love of god, his governance will not increase the amount of freedom that people using Twitter have. Coldtea pointed out that this exact line was being used by conservatives when they were getting banned, but everyone was fine with it. But now that others are getting banned, it’s suddenly not ok. I think double standards are bad in general, and we should just quit with the banwaves. But that would mean letting people like Andrew Tate stay. Are you sure that’s what you want?
- zimpenfish 4y ago> But now that others are getting banned, it’s suddenly not ok. No. Ol' Muskie can do what he wants - if he's bored, he can throw 19 d10s and ban the user who posted that status id and get GPT-3 to generate the reason why they're banned. It's his company. Go nuts, Ol' Muskie! What he can't do, though, without pushback or commentary, is turn up pronouncing that "FREE SPEECH IS HERE", "BOTS ARE BAD", "ONLY ILLEGAL SPEECH WILL BE CENSORED", etc., immediately go back on all three of those, enable and promote bigots, take a hard turn into transphobia, and then start throwing hissy fits at people who call him out on his hypocrisy and lies by banning people with post-hoc rationales. If he doesn't like people calling him on his bullshit decisions, there's a simple solution. Hell, liberals and progressives would have -some- respect for him if he just owned his bullshit and said "Yes, I'm a petty narcissist who is now pandering to conservatives and bigots because they'll stroke my ego if I punch down."
- aschearer 4y agoCopying from another thread, cuz there are so many confused souls: Not sure how many times we must explain this, he can do what he wants with his website. But don't tell us you're a champion of free speech while capriciously silencing detractors. "The left" never claimed to be champions for free speech. "They" sought a balance between freedom of speech and public harm. At least that's my take, I can't speak for "them." Elon Musk calls himself a "free speech absolutist" and that if it's not illegal speech, it shouldn't be banned. Yet the moment he's at the helm, the bans start flowing for all manner of legal speech. What I'm saying is, words have meaning. If you want to claim a principle you have to make an effort to live by it. People who claim principles and proceed to ignore them or even act contrary to them are not principled people, they're just making noise. We should not listen to them, or take what they say seriously. For unprincipled people are fairweather friends, and likely have ulterior motives.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ta8903 4y agoMeh, this is a pretty shit article based on some twitter-style "hot take" definition of conservatism, I know people love getting ragebaited but there is no reason for anyone on either side of the argument to bother responding here.
- stcroixx 4y agoAs someone who is neither a fan or hater, this was almost incomprehensible. So you think someone's politics are boring? Why? Nothing I read told me. Is there a problem with someone else's politics being boring to you? Why would anyone be interested? This apparently wasn't written with persuasion as a goal. So then, why is it? One thing that stood out was a long, novel definition of conservatism described as succinct, which I'd disagree with. There are more succinct definitions available in any dictionary and they all mean generally the same thing.