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Elon should have cut his losses and ditched Twitter. There’s more to life than trying to do whatever he’s trying to do there. Presumably he’s trying to create

Elon should have cut his losses and ditched Twitter. There’s more to life than trying to do whatever he’s trying to do there. Presumably he’s trying to create value. What’s the point when he’s $30,000,000,000 down?

lapcat 3y ago
> Presumably he’s trying to create value. I'm not sure that's true. I get the impression that he acquired Twitter for political reasons. And all of Musk's associates egging him on were right-wing political activists. An extreme example of this is Larry Ellison, a well-known funder of right-wing causes. It came out in the acquisition trial that Ellison offered Musk essentially a blank check to invest in acquiring Twitter. Yet at that point, Ellison himself had only ever tweeted once, back in 2012. He doesn't give a crap about Twitter or the Twitter experience, except insofar as it advances his political cause. (Just checking, I was surprised to discover that https://twitter.com/larryellison/with_replies https://twitter.com/larryellison/with_replies tweeted twice on October 5, thereby tripling his all-time tweet count from one to three.) Musk himself has said things like, "The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters". Whether he's serious or not, who knows, but we can't assume that $billions in losses necessarily matter to someone of Musk's extreme world-historical wealth.
- andrewstuart 3y ago
  I wonder how he really thinks about it. Whatever he thought at the start, I bet it's not how he feels today.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > Whatever he thought at the start, I bet it's not how he feels today. That seems to be true of many things...
    - andrewstuart 3y ago
      Like every single thing I have ever done.
      - lapcat 3y ago
        You should give yourself more credit than that. Have you ever signed a purchase agreement for a house without performing an inspection first, and then try to back out of the deal, claiming problems with the house? If not, then there's no real analogy.
        andrewstuart 3y ago
        OK now I gotta know what was wrong with the house, and did you manage to back out? Was it a meth factory?
        lapcat 3y ago
        I think you misunderstood my comment? It was a hypothetical scenario.
- Zigurd 3y ago
  Remember Elon was sued to force him to perform to an agreement he signed, to buy Twitter. Up to the moment he announced he would buy it after all, he was trying to get out of the deal. Based on what is actually known about the circumstances of him spending $44B to avoid litigation, the likeliest explanation is that he thought the value of Twitter would grow, or at least lose less compared to the cost of a settlement. Now the spin is, as Pee Wee Herman said "I meant to do that!"
- rsynnott 3y ago
  I kind of assume that it’s because he’s desperate for attention, even negative attention, tbh. Note that every time talk about him dies down, he does something else stupid. I wouldn’t be _amazed_ if the “woke mind virus” stuff is just because he’s found that the people who are into that tend to be easily led and into hero worship (I’m convinced that this is why transphobia got so popular with has-been British celebs a few years back; they’re rewarded with hero worship from this crowd). I would wonder how much of this he actually believes, or indeed if he has any beliefs beyond “people should talk about me all the time.”
  - TurkishPoptart 3y ago
    He (Musk) actually seems to care about humanity, and that baffles people.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      He doesn't seem to care much about humanity to me.
    - jc_811 3y ago
      In my opinion, he doesn't care about anything except being known as the guy who... For example: He doesn't care about going to Mars. He cares about being known as the guy who went to mars He doesn't care about transitioning the world away from fossil fuels. He cares about being known as the guy who transitioned the world away from fossil fuels It just so happens that "being known as the guy who did something" generally correlates to the "thing actually being done". But for him that's just a nice side effect. If you told him the world could have all of his goals with the caveat being nobody would know it was him who did it. I don't think he'd ever agree to that. Again, just my opinion, but based on his public actions and antics this is what I currently believe about him.
      - hellotheretoday 3y ago
        From a behavioral psychology perspective we don’t necessarily discern between good quality and poor quality attention when considering attention as reinforcement. Eg behaviors that are reinforced by attention seek any attention regardless of the type of attention. I don’t care if you validate what I do, I care that you observe what I do. This is a core tenet of applied behavior analysis and why extinction for attention maintained behaviors requires removal of all attention, not just praise. Thus “don’t feed the trolls” being the most sage wisdom in the history of the internet. However, we struggle to understand this core concept of the human condition and we don’t really cover it in any basic education. So as a result we have a society wherein it’s very easy for people who don’t give a shit about their image to rise in stature by being controversial instead of being correct or good. As an aside this is something parents struggle with SO much in my work. We identify an attention maintained behavior. I educate on the above in more detail, function of behavior, extinction, etc. and then they almost always need to be corrected because they immediately scold the child, which is providing attention! Data analysis will show this has little impact on rates of behavior but planned ignoral will often have dramatic consequences if they can actually stay consistent with implementation. The problem for someone like Elon is that you will simply never get everyone to ignore him. This procedure generally only works with young children wherein you can get a good degree of stimulus control for that reason. Otherwise it’s the issue with telling a kid in middle school to ignore their bully. They might do it and they might do a perfect job but that bully will almost certainly continue to get reinforcement from other sources making the initial kids efforts essentially meaningless.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I get the impression that he acquired Twitter for political reasons. He bought Twitter because the court forced him to adhere to his promises. He didn't want to buy it at all, which is why he fought having to go through with the purchase.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > He bought Twitter because the court forced him to adhere to his promises. His promises to... buy Twitter. I actually mentioned the court battle in my comment: "It came out in the acquisition trial that". The court didn't magically force him to buy Twitter out of the blue. Musk signed a legal agreement to buy Twitter. So the question is, why did he do that in the first place?
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      He was, essentially, trolling. What he really wanted was to be on the board, not own the company. The offer he made was meant as a jab at Twitter. I am pretty sure that he never thought he'd have to follow through with it. If he did, then he wouldn't have made such a ridiculously overpriced offer.
      - lesuorac 3y ago
        If he really wanted to be on the board he could've stopped at 9.2% of twitter instead of making a purchase agreement ... Twitter offered him a seat initially [1]. I don't think you can use logic to justify a clearly irrational decision made by Musk. Not everything is 4d chess; sometimes people just do things. [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/media/elon-musk-turns-seat-twitters-board-investing-enough-invite-rcna23808 https://www.nbcnews.com/media/elon-musk-turns-seat-twitters-...
        JohnFen 3y ago
        > I don't think you can use logic to justify a clearly irrational decision made by Musk. I agree. I'm just doing my best to give him some amount of benefit of the doubt. The alternative is to say that he's a bit crazy -- which might be true, but I'm not in a position to be able to say it with confidence.
dragonwriter 3y ago
Money isn’t utility, its something you expend to get utility. Maybe the influence he was had controlling the narrative on Twitter is worth more than $30 billion to him.
postalrat 3y ago
You mean he will only have about $200,000,000,000 to live on the rest of his life? Financial ruin.

lapcat 3y ago

> Presumably he’s trying to create value. I'm not sure that's true. I get the impression that he acquired Twitter for political reasons. And all of Musk's associates egging him on were right-wing political activists. An extreme example of this is Larry Ellison, a well-known funder of right-wing causes. It came out in the acquisition trial that Ellison offered Musk essentially a blank check to invest in acquiring Twitter. Yet at that point, Ellison himself had only ever tweeted once, back in 2012. He doesn't give a crap about Twitter or the Twitter experience, except insofar as it advances his political cause. (Just checking, I was surprised to discover that https://twitter.com/larryellison/with_replies https://twitter.com/larryellison/with_replies tweeted twice on October 5, thereby tripling his all-time tweet count from one to three.) Musk himself has said things like, "The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters". Whether he's serious or not, who knows, but we can't assume that $billions in losses necessarily matter to someone of Musk's extreme world-historical wealth.

andrewstuart 3y ago
I wonder how he really thinks about it. Whatever he thought at the start, I bet it's not how he feels today.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > Whatever he thought at the start, I bet it's not how he feels today. That seems to be true of many things...
  - andrewstuart 3y ago
    Like every single thing I have ever done.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      You should give yourself more credit than that. Have you ever signed a purchase agreement for a house without performing an inspection first, and then try to back out of the deal, claiming problems with the house? If not, then there's no real analogy.
      - andrewstuart 3y ago
        OK now I gotta know what was wrong with the house, and did you manage to back out? Was it a meth factory?
        lapcat 3y ago
        I think you misunderstood my comment? It was a hypothetical scenario.
Zigurd 3y ago
Remember Elon was sued to force him to perform to an agreement he signed, to buy Twitter. Up to the moment he announced he would buy it after all, he was trying to get out of the deal. Based on what is actually known about the circumstances of him spending $44B to avoid litigation, the likeliest explanation is that he thought the value of Twitter would grow, or at least lose less compared to the cost of a settlement. Now the spin is, as Pee Wee Herman said "I meant to do that!"
rsynnott 3y ago
I kind of assume that it’s because he’s desperate for attention, even negative attention, tbh. Note that every time talk about him dies down, he does something else stupid. I wouldn’t be _amazed_ if the “woke mind virus” stuff is just because he’s found that the people who are into that tend to be easily led and into hero worship (I’m convinced that this is why transphobia got so popular with has-been British celebs a few years back; they’re rewarded with hero worship from this crowd). I would wonder how much of this he actually believes, or indeed if he has any beliefs beyond “people should talk about me all the time.”
- TurkishPoptart 3y ago
  He (Musk) actually seems to care about humanity, and that baffles people.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    He doesn't seem to care much about humanity to me.
  - jc_811 3y ago
    In my opinion, he doesn't care about anything except being known as the guy who... For example: He doesn't care about going to Mars. He cares about being known as the guy who went to mars He doesn't care about transitioning the world away from fossil fuels. He cares about being known as the guy who transitioned the world away from fossil fuels It just so happens that "being known as the guy who did something" generally correlates to the "thing actually being done". But for him that's just a nice side effect. If you told him the world could have all of his goals with the caveat being nobody would know it was him who did it. I don't think he'd ever agree to that. Again, just my opinion, but based on his public actions and antics this is what I currently believe about him.
    - hellotheretoday 3y ago
      From a behavioral psychology perspective we don’t necessarily discern between good quality and poor quality attention when considering attention as reinforcement. Eg behaviors that are reinforced by attention seek any attention regardless of the type of attention. I don’t care if you validate what I do, I care that you observe what I do. This is a core tenet of applied behavior analysis and why extinction for attention maintained behaviors requires removal of all attention, not just praise. Thus “don’t feed the trolls” being the most sage wisdom in the history of the internet. However, we struggle to understand this core concept of the human condition and we don’t really cover it in any basic education. So as a result we have a society wherein it’s very easy for people who don’t give a shit about their image to rise in stature by being controversial instead of being correct or good. As an aside this is something parents struggle with SO much in my work. We identify an attention maintained behavior. I educate on the above in more detail, function of behavior, extinction, etc. and then they almost always need to be corrected because they immediately scold the child, which is providing attention! Data analysis will show this has little impact on rates of behavior but planned ignoral will often have dramatic consequences if they can actually stay consistent with implementation. The problem for someone like Elon is that you will simply never get everyone to ignore him. This procedure generally only works with young children wherein you can get a good degree of stimulus control for that reason. Otherwise it’s the issue with telling a kid in middle school to ignore their bully. They might do it and they might do a perfect job but that bully will almost certainly continue to get reinforcement from other sources making the initial kids efforts essentially meaningless.
JohnFen 3y ago
> I get the impression that he acquired Twitter for political reasons. He bought Twitter because the court forced him to adhere to his promises. He didn't want to buy it at all, which is why he fought having to go through with the purchase.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > He bought Twitter because the court forced him to adhere to his promises. His promises to... buy Twitter. I actually mentioned the court battle in my comment: "It came out in the acquisition trial that". The court didn't magically force him to buy Twitter out of the blue. Musk signed a legal agreement to buy Twitter. So the question is, why did he do that in the first place?
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    He was, essentially, trolling. What he really wanted was to be on the board, not own the company. The offer he made was meant as a jab at Twitter. I am pretty sure that he never thought he'd have to follow through with it. If he did, then he wouldn't have made such a ridiculously overpriced offer.
    - lesuorac 3y ago
      If he really wanted to be on the board he could've stopped at 9.2% of twitter instead of making a purchase agreement ... Twitter offered him a seat initially [1]. I don't think you can use logic to justify a clearly irrational decision made by Musk. Not everything is 4d chess; sometimes people just do things. [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/media/elon-musk-turns-seat-twitters-board-investing-enough-invite-rcna23808 https://www.nbcnews.com/media/elon-musk-turns-seat-twitters-...
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        > I don't think you can use logic to justify a clearly irrational decision made by Musk. I agree. I'm just doing my best to give him some amount of benefit of the doubt. The alternative is to say that he's a bit crazy -- which might be true, but I'm not in a position to be able to say it with confidence.

dragonwriter 3y ago

Money isn’t utility, its something you expend to get utility. Maybe the influence he was had controlling the narrative on Twitter is worth more than $30 billion to him.

postalrat 3y ago

You mean he will only have about $200,000,000,000 to live on the rest of his life? Financial ruin.