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The evidence is very noisy, for sure. My only basis for this is the private text exchange with Jack Dorsey where they discussed how Twitter should have been bui

The evidence is very noisy, for sure. My only basis for this is the private text exchange with Jack Dorsey where they discussed how Twitter should have been built. To me that’s the only true window into his intentions - all other public comms are tainted by other potential motivations. To me, Musk is kind of the quintessential engineering bro, who’s fundamentally motivated by wanting to be the one who solves the trickiest problems. Sometimes his actual decision-making is influenced by vanity and voyeurism, but the underlying theme seems to be rooted in problem-solving.

bmitc 4y ago
It's not noisy at all. It's perfectly clear. > My only basis for this is the private text exchange with Jack Dorsey where they discussed how Twitter should have been built. To me that’s the only true window into his intentions - all other public comms are tainted by other potential motivations. You have to understand that text message thread in context. It's two narcissistic billionaires who think they're above everyone else talking to each other. It's a sort of billionaire pissing contest where they both also pat each other on the back. It's two people thinking they're the smartest in the room. It just so happens they were the only ones in the room. For Dorsey, if he knew how Twitter should have been built since the beginning, then why didn't he do so? He claims to have known this from the start, but he was in full control for years. Musk was just chiming in to showcase that he gets it, whatever it is.
gamblor956 4y ago
And yet, Musk has never solved "the trickiest problems." He simply does "first order thinking" that conveniently ignores the real issues with whatever he claims he's solving. (See, e.g., Hyperloop, Boring Co, Cybertruck, FSD, Tesla's robotic factory, the cave submarine, etc.) At every step of the way, Musk is just cosplaying as an engineer and interfering with the actual work being done.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  It's like the time he was on a podcast and promised that the next tesla would have "cold gas thrusters", literally a tank of pressurized gas that it was going to use as thrust to make it accelerate faster. Plenty of engineers worth their salt recognized right away that this is on it's face stupid, and has no point. Even if you didn't feel it in your gut, a back of the envelope calculation shows how stupid it is. And yet, stupid people fawned over it, saying crap like he's putting rockets in the tesla and other hyped up nonsense. Some tried to backpeddle "oh it was a joke". It wasn't a joke, elon has been spouting bullshit, often technobabble for decades and whenever somebody calls him on it he handwaves it away and sicks his fans on them. Of course he genuinely thought that was a genius idea. It's always been laughable and disgusting to call him an engineer. It's an insult to people who actually went through school, who didn't fake their degree, who didn't shirk classes to do whatever instead. An insult to the people who sometimes have to sign their name to a structure on pain of lawsuit. He should have NO credibility in any educated field. Of course, devs often like for exactly that reason, since they love to cosplay engineers too, as if our bubble gum and duct tape plumbing industry could be considered engineering.
  - wruza 4y ago
    Your take on devs isn’t quite fair, as if being a real engineer magically makes one a much better duct tape plumber who can ship their bathroom on time, in software. There’s also hordes of regular engineers who generate and produce nonsense, you can tell it by just looking into appliances or computer parts.

bmitc 4y ago

It's not noisy at all. It's perfectly clear. > My only basis for this is the private text exchange with Jack Dorsey where they discussed how Twitter should have been built. To me that’s the only true window into his intentions - all other public comms are tainted by other potential motivations. You have to understand that text message thread in context. It's two narcissistic billionaires who think they're above everyone else talking to each other. It's a sort of billionaire pissing contest where they both also pat each other on the back. It's two people thinking they're the smartest in the room. It just so happens they were the only ones in the room. For Dorsey, if he knew how Twitter should have been built since the beginning, then why didn't he do so? He claims to have known this from the start, but he was in full control for years. Musk was just chiming in to showcase that he gets it, whatever it is.

gamblor956 4y ago

And yet, Musk has never solved "the trickiest problems." He simply does "first order thinking" that conveniently ignores the real issues with whatever he claims he's solving. (See, e.g., Hyperloop, Boring Co, Cybertruck, FSD, Tesla's robotic factory, the cave submarine, etc.) At every step of the way, Musk is just cosplaying as an engineer and interfering with the actual work being done.

mrguyorama 4y ago
It's like the time he was on a podcast and promised that the next tesla would have "cold gas thrusters", literally a tank of pressurized gas that it was going to use as thrust to make it accelerate faster. Plenty of engineers worth their salt recognized right away that this is on it's face stupid, and has no point. Even if you didn't feel it in your gut, a back of the envelope calculation shows how stupid it is. And yet, stupid people fawned over it, saying crap like he's putting rockets in the tesla and other hyped up nonsense. Some tried to backpeddle "oh it was a joke". It wasn't a joke, elon has been spouting bullshit, often technobabble for decades and whenever somebody calls him on it he handwaves it away and sicks his fans on them. Of course he genuinely thought that was a genius idea. It's always been laughable and disgusting to call him an engineer. It's an insult to people who actually went through school, who didn't fake their degree, who didn't shirk classes to do whatever instead. An insult to the people who sometimes have to sign their name to a structure on pain of lawsuit. He should have NO credibility in any educated field. Of course, devs often like for exactly that reason, since they love to cosplay engineers too, as if our bubble gum and duct tape plumbing industry could be considered engineering.
- wruza 4y ago
  Your take on devs isn’t quite fair, as if being a real engineer magically makes one a much better duct tape plumber who can ship their bathroom on time, in software. There’s also hordes of regular engineers who generate and produce nonsense, you can tell it by just looking into appliances or computer parts.