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This feels like a lot of decisions of Musk w.r.t. Twitter have been, impulsive and hastily implemented.
by dtech 3y ago
This feels like a lot of decisions of Musk w.r.t. Twitter have been, impulsive and hastily implemented.
- prox 3y ago[flagged]
- foobarbecue 3y agoThe problem isn't that you said Musk has Asperger's. The problem is that you are saying Asperger's causes impulsive business decisions. Nothing in your quote supports that contention, and it's a terribly ableist thing to say. In fact your quote suggests the opposite-- people with Asperger's tend to be bound to routine rather than impulsive.
- prox 3y agoThanks for commenting, I see what you are saying, and you’re right.
- halkony 3y agoI don't think your comment was wrong to express. We've spent a lot of time cataloging human behavior over the last 100 years, so it's natural to be curious how the definitions relate to Musk's behavior. I think the parent comment is just especially touchy to these comments.
- stusmall 3y agoI just want to drop in and say thank you. I almost never see comments like this on the internet. It's a refreshing thing to see.
- foobarbecue 3y agoVery true about prox's response. I also now regret saying "terribly ableist" -- in retrospect the right words would have been something like "unintentionally ableist." Reasonableness begets reasonableness...
- slily 3y agoIt's not ableist. It's just incorrect. It wouldn't be wrong if you replaced Asperger's with say ADHD. Be careful of slapping -ism/-ist labels on anything that offends you personally when there's no clear discriminatory intent.
- maxbond 3y agoI would still call that ableist and an abuse of therapy language. You don't need to tarnish everyone with ADHD to criticize a single person. You shouldn't use therapy language as a cudgel. Discriminatory intent isn't required, a discriminatory outcome is. Random people with ADHD don't need to catch strays here. The criticism is that he is impulsive and that he isn't properly managing himself. No diagnosis is required.
- slily 3y agoI think you might be seeing criticism where there isn't because it's about Elon Musk. I agree with the sentiment that you don't need to "diagnose" everyone and everything, but I think that's also a symptom of our tendency to want to apply labels to everything we see.
- maxbond 3y agoI understand you may not be levying a criticism, and I don't mean to put words in your mouth because I know you didn't make the claim which is at issue, but it's difficult for me to read "he makes impulsive business decisions" as not being a criticism. Especially given the context, where a bunch of people are explicitly being critical.
- slily 3y agoFor me criticism has a "judgey" connotation whereas I see this as more of an observation, but I understand associating a negative trait with Asperger's as if it inevitably leads to that trait being off-putting.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
- foobarbecue 3y agoAlso, please don't post the same thing in two places in a HN thread, unless you have an exceptionally good reason. You can link to a previous comment. URL is in the "x minutes ago" link. Hah, x!
- prox 3y agoAh ok, understood! Thanks for the heads up.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoI think the relevant part of Asperger’s would be a difficulty experiencing an automatic social-emotional reaction in response to the opinions of others. A sort of congenital tone-deafness. I could see this being a factor in someone doing things that appear reckless, not because the person is actually impulsive, but because they are unable to intuitively care about the reactions of other people. And so, in a situation where most people would decide against a course of action primarily because of the expected social reaction, an Asperger’s person may just do it anyway. Also, I suspect the ableist accusations are coming from people who do not themselves have Asperger’s…