5 ms·

Single-handedly keeping the dream of space travel alive and doing more for electrification of vehicles than anyone else alive… What a villain

beardedwizard 3y ago
The me too movement showed us clearly: you do not separate the artist from the art. Elons bad behavior is his legacy now.
- YtGoodman 3y ago
  What if someone like MLK Jr had skeletons in his closet that we discovered? Should we discard his legacy so we don’t “separate the artist from the art”?
  - bdcravens 3y ago
    How about Bill Cosby?
    - beardedwizard 3y ago
      Is this a serious question? Bill Cosby is dead to America.
  - williamstein 3y ago
    Yes
  - AtlasBarfed 3y ago
    Mlk Jr does have skeletons in his closet
  - acdha 3y ago
    He does - womanizing - and scholars are discussing that in context: https://theconversation.com/im-an-mlk-scholar-and-ill-never-be-able-to-view-king-in-the-same-light-118015 https://theconversation.com/im-an-mlk-scholar-and-ill-never-... Here’s a key difference: being a lousy husband (I include sidelining his wife for sexist reasons) tarnished his reputation but it doesn’t directly undercut the civil rights movement’s primary success. It does call into question the movement calling for equal rights on race but being marginal on gender, and quite a lot has been written about that. In contrast, most of the damage Musk has done to his reputation has been undercutting the things he’s supposedly good at by demonstrating that he isn’t. His sexual harassment or family feuds are salacious but they didn’t spoil his companies’ reputation the way things like Tesla autopilot or basically everything at Twitter had done.
    - insickness 3y ago
      Twitter was far worse of a dumpster fire before Musk got a hold of it. Read the Twitter files. Just because Twitter doesn't tilt hard left anymore doesn't make Musk a villain, just a villain to you. There's a big difference.
      - kemotep 3y ago
        I am no longer able to use the site because of his changes. 10 years of following links from articles or friends and then scrolling threads. I guess it cost more than the ad revanue my click would’ve generated but I can no longer visit the site to generate any more revenue now. So objectively twitter is worse under Musk’s stewardship as the site no longer works at all for me.
      - acdha 3y ago
        > Twitter was far worse of a dumpster fire before Musk got a hold of it. Read the Twitter files. I did, which is how I know you didn’t. There really wasn’t much there - even Taibbi eventually admitted that – and it requires some real dishonesty to come up with a “hard left” label.
        Clubber 3y ago
        The government coerced Twitter to delete posts. That's not nothing. 5th circuit court of appeals just had a ruling that this indeed violated the first amendment. https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pd... You'd think this would be much more prominent in the news.
        acdha 3y ago
        > The government coerced Twitter to delete posts. That's not nothing. I note that you aren’t citing examples for a reason. That’s because we both know that’s not accurate way to describe some federal government officials or campaign staff alerting Twitter to posts which clearly violated their terms of service, especially when there are other examples shown where Twitter said no without consequences. > 5th circuit court of appeals just had a ruling that this violated the first amendment No, they didn’t. What they did was remove 9 of the 10 injunctions a Trump appointee issued earlier this year: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.294.0_2.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... The one point they did allow was substantially trimmed back, too: “So, the injunction's language must be further tailored to exclusively target illegal conduct and provide the officials with additional guidance or instruction on what behavior is prohibited.” I think it’s important to remember that this is one of the most conservative circuit courts in the country with a history of activist rulings, and this case is an election year move by some prominent Republicans to help their party’s presidential candidate, who appointed one of the judges. The fact that even that court trimmed things down so dramatically doesn’t suggest it’s anywhere near as strong as the conservative commenters whose analysis you’re repeating would like.
  - beardedwizard 3y ago
    Same with Thomas Edison who only recently is being portrayed as the villain he was.
    - Zigurd 3y ago
      Ehhh Edison was considered quite a huckster for a while. The "invented the lightbulb" trope is worse than "founded Tesla."
  - JuanPosadas 3y ago
    Did you even think about this comparison before you typed it? Musk's pre-Twitter and unexagerated legacy is luxury cars and some vague stuff about space. MLK Jr is a human rights icon who was assassinated. Musk is still eligible for his legacy holding a science victory. For example if he can get something more substantial to happen on the moon/mars or kick start asteroid mining. Right now his legacy is proving billionaires aren't geniuses and that meritocracy is a lie.
- Clubber 3y ago
  >you do not separate the artist from the art I do. I think a lot of people just like bitching and Elon is the current hotness. Bitchin' for clicks. I wonder if these people analyze their own mistakes as critically as they do others'. I'd be surprised if that was so. >Elons bad behavior is his legacy now. Yea, that won't age well 10-20 years from now, look at Steve Jobs' legacy. He was a huge dick at times, but people still buy Apple stuff like crazy. Who remembers the names of his critics? I sure don't. Also, what adult uses terms like "superhero," and "supervillain" to describe a real person in professional journalistic writing? Too many movies. They should take their job more seriously. It's as if they can't think outside binary good/evil like a toddler. There's some criticism from me. They can take it as seriously as I take their's. PS: Notice me too got ignored by the press as soon as Biden got accused? It died faster than Disco. Funny that. Unfortunate, but such is politics.
- mortureb 3y ago
  [flagged]
BillyTheMage 3y ago
Space travel and cars are not objectively good, there's arguments to be made against keeping those things alive.
- YtGoodman 3y ago
  objectively good according to whose system of morals? Edit: my point in arguing this is that hn’s audience would worship anyone who has done a tenth of what Musk has - but the slightest bit of political nonconformity makes him a “supervillain”
  - itiro 3y ago
    Elon hasn’t invented anything novel. He aims Federal government contract money at actual engineers. Give be $5 billion, I’ll hire smart people with it, and binge Elden Ring.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  Avoiding the great filter in two fundamental ways is morally wrong. - the internet
- dudul 3y ago
  Call me narrow minded, but if Humanity has a goal i can't imagine that it would be anything else than exploring space.
  - Zigurd 3y ago
    What we will find when we explore Mars is that we are Earth creatures. There are good reasons to doubt humans will ever travel to outer planets, nevermind to neighboring stars. Post-humans, maybe. Not us. Having a decent life for all humans and minimizing the damage we do to the only habitat that supports human life is a vastly more important goal than crossing a void to reach an inhospitable rock. We will gain knowledge and technologies in pursuit of space exploration. There are benefits. But humanity has higher goals.
NicoJuicy 3y ago
You talk like he started Tesla...
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  Tesla scaled from a small number of bespoke kit car demo vehicles to a legitimate mass market car manufacturer under musk leadership.
  - NicoJuicy 3y ago
    Under his money, sure. Seeing Twitter, euh, x under his active leadership makes me doubt his skills a bit more.
bdcravens 3y ago
This is more of a situation of "in spite of"

beardedwizard 3y ago

The me too movement showed us clearly: you do not separate the artist from the art. Elons bad behavior is his legacy now.

YtGoodman 3y ago
What if someone like MLK Jr had skeletons in his closet that we discovered? Should we discard his legacy so we don’t “separate the artist from the art”?
- bdcravens 3y ago
  How about Bill Cosby?
  - beardedwizard 3y ago
    Is this a serious question? Bill Cosby is dead to America.
- williamstein 3y ago
  Yes
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  Mlk Jr does have skeletons in his closet
- acdha 3y ago
  He does - womanizing - and scholars are discussing that in context: https://theconversation.com/im-an-mlk-scholar-and-ill-never-be-able-to-view-king-in-the-same-light-118015 https://theconversation.com/im-an-mlk-scholar-and-ill-never-... Here’s a key difference: being a lousy husband (I include sidelining his wife for sexist reasons) tarnished his reputation but it doesn’t directly undercut the civil rights movement’s primary success. It does call into question the movement calling for equal rights on race but being marginal on gender, and quite a lot has been written about that. In contrast, most of the damage Musk has done to his reputation has been undercutting the things he’s supposedly good at by demonstrating that he isn’t. His sexual harassment or family feuds are salacious but they didn’t spoil his companies’ reputation the way things like Tesla autopilot or basically everything at Twitter had done.
  - insickness 3y ago
    Twitter was far worse of a dumpster fire before Musk got a hold of it. Read the Twitter files. Just because Twitter doesn't tilt hard left anymore doesn't make Musk a villain, just a villain to you. There's a big difference.
    - kemotep 3y ago
      I am no longer able to use the site because of his changes. 10 years of following links from articles or friends and then scrolling threads. I guess it cost more than the ad revanue my click would’ve generated but I can no longer visit the site to generate any more revenue now. So objectively twitter is worse under Musk’s stewardship as the site no longer works at all for me.
    - acdha 3y ago
      > Twitter was far worse of a dumpster fire before Musk got a hold of it. Read the Twitter files. I did, which is how I know you didn’t. There really wasn’t much there - even Taibbi eventually admitted that – and it requires some real dishonesty to come up with a “hard left” label.
      - Clubber 3y ago
        The government coerced Twitter to delete posts. That's not nothing. 5th circuit court of appeals just had a ruling that this indeed violated the first amendment. https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pd... You'd think this would be much more prominent in the news.
        acdha 3y ago
        > The government coerced Twitter to delete posts. That's not nothing. I note that you aren’t citing examples for a reason. That’s because we both know that’s not accurate way to describe some federal government officials or campaign staff alerting Twitter to posts which clearly violated their terms of service, especially when there are other examples shown where Twitter said no without consequences. > 5th circuit court of appeals just had a ruling that this violated the first amendment No, they didn’t. What they did was remove 9 of the 10 injunctions a Trump appointee issued earlier this year: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.294.0_2.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... The one point they did allow was substantially trimmed back, too: “So, the injunction's language must be further tailored to exclusively target illegal conduct and provide the officials with additional guidance or instruction on what behavior is prohibited.” I think it’s important to remember that this is one of the most conservative circuit courts in the country with a history of activist rulings, and this case is an election year move by some prominent Republicans to help their party’s presidential candidate, who appointed one of the judges. The fact that even that court trimmed things down so dramatically doesn’t suggest it’s anywhere near as strong as the conservative commenters whose analysis you’re repeating would like.
- beardedwizard 3y ago
  Same with Thomas Edison who only recently is being portrayed as the villain he was.
  - Zigurd 3y ago
    Ehhh Edison was considered quite a huckster for a while. The "invented the lightbulb" trope is worse than "founded Tesla."
- JuanPosadas 3y ago
  Did you even think about this comparison before you typed it? Musk's pre-Twitter and unexagerated legacy is luxury cars and some vague stuff about space. MLK Jr is a human rights icon who was assassinated. Musk is still eligible for his legacy holding a science victory. For example if he can get something more substantial to happen on the moon/mars or kick start asteroid mining. Right now his legacy is proving billionaires aren't geniuses and that meritocracy is a lie.
Clubber 3y ago
>you do not separate the artist from the art I do. I think a lot of people just like bitching and Elon is the current hotness. Bitchin' for clicks. I wonder if these people analyze their own mistakes as critically as they do others'. I'd be surprised if that was so. >Elons bad behavior is his legacy now. Yea, that won't age well 10-20 years from now, look at Steve Jobs' legacy. He was a huge dick at times, but people still buy Apple stuff like crazy. Who remembers the names of his critics? I sure don't. Also, what adult uses terms like "superhero," and "supervillain" to describe a real person in professional journalistic writing? Too many movies. They should take their job more seriously. It's as if they can't think outside binary good/evil like a toddler. There's some criticism from me. They can take it as seriously as I take their's. PS: Notice me too got ignored by the press as soon as Biden got accused? It died faster than Disco. Funny that. Unfortunate, but such is politics.
mortureb 3y ago
[flagged]

BillyTheMage 3y ago

Space travel and cars are not objectively good, there's arguments to be made against keeping those things alive.

YtGoodman 3y ago
objectively good according to whose system of morals? Edit: my point in arguing this is that hn’s audience would worship anyone who has done a tenth of what Musk has - but the slightest bit of political nonconformity makes him a “supervillain”
- itiro 3y ago
  Elon hasn’t invented anything novel. He aims Federal government contract money at actual engineers. Give be $5 billion, I’ll hire smart people with it, and binge Elden Ring.
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Avoiding the great filter in two fundamental ways is morally wrong. - the internet
dudul 3y ago
Call me narrow minded, but if Humanity has a goal i can't imagine that it would be anything else than exploring space.
- Zigurd 3y ago
  What we will find when we explore Mars is that we are Earth creatures. There are good reasons to doubt humans will ever travel to outer planets, nevermind to neighboring stars. Post-humans, maybe. Not us. Having a decent life for all humans and minimizing the damage we do to the only habitat that supports human life is a vastly more important goal than crossing a void to reach an inhospitable rock. We will gain knowledge and technologies in pursuit of space exploration. There are benefits. But humanity has higher goals.

NicoJuicy 3y ago

You talk like he started Tesla...

AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Tesla scaled from a small number of bespoke kit car demo vehicles to a legitimate mass market car manufacturer under musk leadership.
- NicoJuicy 3y ago
  Under his money, sure. Seeing Twitter, euh, x under his active leadership makes me doubt his skills a bit more.

bdcravens 3y ago

This is more of a situation of "in spite of"