4 ms·

People who still support Musk at this point despite many scandals have had their head in the sand for months and won't be persuaded. As someone who used to be

by hn2017 4y ago

People who still support Musk at this point despite many scandals have had their head in the sand for months and won't be persuaded. As someone who used to be a Musk fan, it's disheartening to see him become radicalized.

bmelton 4y ago
It's always baffled me that people seem so intent to need to take the whole person when evaluating anything they've done. Some actions offer color for their current activities, most don't. Someone considered to be "bad" in whatever aspect still has good qualities, people that love them, and likely, kindness in their hearts. A good writer who is a bigot is still a good writer. Elon still has things he's smart about, and things he's dumb about. But as it sits, if I'm a fan of the work Elon has done with SpaceX or Tesla, I have to qualify those things because the assumption is that I've just cosigned every dumb/negative thing he's ever said, when that isn't true.
- lanstin 4y ago
  I put a trans flag on my Model 3, just to try to make this point. But Tesla was just again found guilty of abhorrent racism to their workers so perhaps the greyness of Elon’s moral abilities is more pervasive than it seemed at first.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  It isn't your fault, but when someone jumps on a soap box and cries for attention and generally acts mean, spiteful, and petty -- and refuses to admit that they are wrong about anything -- people tend to really dislike them. And you can claim that we should be able to remove actions from author but that is not human nature. When you call a genuinely good, self-sacrificing person a 'pedophile' because they refused to praise your showcase gimmick, people tend to look back at everything you have done previously in the light of 'is everything good I have heard about this person a forced narrative?'. You can't walk back from that. This is why reputations are so important -- it doesn't matter if you solved world hunger -- when people find out you are a bully who takes credit for other people's work and refuses to acknowledge criticism and fires people because you are in a bad mood then they are going to associate you with that and doubt that you actually did all that much to solve hunger in the first place. You can complain about human nature as much as you want, but a lot of the time there is a good reason for it. People who consistently lie probably didn't do all the good things you thought they did, for one.
  - bmelton 4y ago
    But that's the thing -- reputations (and tangentially, gossip) are great ways to warn you away from potential conflicts you might encounter. If you're scared to date so and so because you know someone else who dated so and so and so and so was mean/abusive, well, you know better. If you're thinking of hiring someone, but they've rage-quit every previous employer they've worked for, then perhaps you know better than to take on that risk. There is no logical reason for doing this with celebrities who are not in our lives, perhaps other than to maintain the habit of gossip? If I were going to work for a Musk-owned company, perhaps I'd think better of it knowing what I do, but if he wakes up tomorrow and gives ten million dollars to a charity I support, I will support that action, without having to adopt anything more than that action in my praise. And for what it's worth, I wasn't complaining about human nature in the previous post, just pointing out that I don't understand it.
    - Eisenstein 4y ago
      > There is no logical reason for doing this with celebrities who are not in our lives I don't think we have figured out how to segregate these because psychology is what it is and technology brings people into our lives as if we know them even when we don't. There was never a way to hear about every thought someone had or what they said or did when you didn't know them until the advent of at least the printing press. Our feeble minds, which arguably don't even make most decisions consciously, haven't caught up yet.
      - bmelton 4y ago
        Perfectly sussed. Hard enough to fathom completely accurate information from items and people we have close access to, much less everyone and every thing.
    - themacguffinman 4y ago
      Reputations aren't just signals of who to avoid, they're also signals of who to punish. Using game theory terminology: in a society of cooperators, defectors must be punished, otherwise other cooperators see defectors get away with bad behavior and think it's okay to defect as well. In this case, Elon is a "defector" who mistreats others and constantly lies.
ilyt 4y ago
Well, they sure have their heads in something...
SecretDreams 4y ago
Power corrupts, absolutely. In musk's case, he was probably always a bit unhinged/POS.. but I used to believe he cared about the world. Ever since pedo guy I dropped him from altruistic status to probably egomaniac status, though.

by hn2017 4y ago

bmelton 4y ago

It's always baffled me that people seem so intent to need to take the whole person when evaluating anything they've done. Some actions offer color for their current activities, most don't. Someone considered to be "bad" in whatever aspect still has good qualities, people that love them, and likely, kindness in their hearts. A good writer who is a bigot is still a good writer. Elon still has things he's smart about, and things he's dumb about. But as it sits, if I'm a fan of the work Elon has done with SpaceX or Tesla, I have to qualify those things because the assumption is that I've just cosigned every dumb/negative thing he's ever said, when that isn't true.

lanstin 4y ago
I put a trans flag on my Model 3, just to try to make this point. But Tesla was just again found guilty of abhorrent racism to their workers so perhaps the greyness of Elon’s moral abilities is more pervasive than it seemed at first.
Eisenstein 4y ago
It isn't your fault, but when someone jumps on a soap box and cries for attention and generally acts mean, spiteful, and petty -- and refuses to admit that they are wrong about anything -- people tend to really dislike them. And you can claim that we should be able to remove actions from author but that is not human nature. When you call a genuinely good, self-sacrificing person a 'pedophile' because they refused to praise your showcase gimmick, people tend to look back at everything you have done previously in the light of 'is everything good I have heard about this person a forced narrative?'. You can't walk back from that. This is why reputations are so important -- it doesn't matter if you solved world hunger -- when people find out you are a bully who takes credit for other people's work and refuses to acknowledge criticism and fires people because you are in a bad mood then they are going to associate you with that and doubt that you actually did all that much to solve hunger in the first place. You can complain about human nature as much as you want, but a lot of the time there is a good reason for it. People who consistently lie probably didn't do all the good things you thought they did, for one.
- bmelton 4y ago
  But that's the thing -- reputations (and tangentially, gossip) are great ways to warn you away from potential conflicts you might encounter. If you're scared to date so and so because you know someone else who dated so and so and so and so was mean/abusive, well, you know better. If you're thinking of hiring someone, but they've rage-quit every previous employer they've worked for, then perhaps you know better than to take on that risk. There is no logical reason for doing this with celebrities who are not in our lives, perhaps other than to maintain the habit of gossip? If I were going to work for a Musk-owned company, perhaps I'd think better of it knowing what I do, but if he wakes up tomorrow and gives ten million dollars to a charity I support, I will support that action, without having to adopt anything more than that action in my praise. And for what it's worth, I wasn't complaining about human nature in the previous post, just pointing out that I don't understand it.
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    > There is no logical reason for doing this with celebrities who are not in our lives I don't think we have figured out how to segregate these because psychology is what it is and technology brings people into our lives as if we know them even when we don't. There was never a way to hear about every thought someone had or what they said or did when you didn't know them until the advent of at least the printing press. Our feeble minds, which arguably don't even make most decisions consciously, haven't caught up yet.
    - bmelton 4y ago
      Perfectly sussed. Hard enough to fathom completely accurate information from items and people we have close access to, much less everyone and every thing.
  - themacguffinman 4y ago
    Reputations aren't just signals of who to avoid, they're also signals of who to punish. Using game theory terminology: in a society of cooperators, defectors must be punished, otherwise other cooperators see defectors get away with bad behavior and think it's okay to defect as well. In this case, Elon is a "defector" who mistreats others and constantly lies.

ilyt 4y ago

Well, they sure have their heads in something...

SecretDreams 4y ago

Power corrupts, absolutely. In musk's case, he was probably always a bit unhinged/POS.. but I used to believe he cared about the world. Ever since pedo guy I dropped him from altruistic status to probably egomaniac status, though.