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This guy was so much more respectable when he stuck to futuristic cars and spaceships... The Twitter sale really broke him, didn't it?

Juliate 2y ago
You mean he was more respectable when he didn't talk so much his mind?
- solardev 2y ago
  Was he really always like that? Or did the fame and megaphone get to him? Kinda sucks :/ He used to be one of my personal heroes, before he got all weird. I miss Musk 1.0.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    He was always like that, as near as I can tell. He became intolerable to me years before any of the Twitter nonsense.
    - scarecrowbob 2y ago
      I get that it makes folks uncomfortable to think that at the base of a lot of techno-utopianism lies a lot authoritarian and anti-human thought. Maybe it doesn't have to be that way. Maybe there is no necessity to believe that all of us mere humans are a weakness which must be transcended on the progressive path to some as-yet unknowable future. But it feels like that undercurrent has always been in much techno-futurist thoughts which we can read in Musk's specific interests and grievances. Maybe that is just a problem with a view of history as the product of historical necessity- maybe it's just easier to see when the changes are specific technological changes instead of more abstract political or economic changes. Anyhow, that's how Musk (and basically anyone who promotes implementing mass, top-down changes to the world) has always felt to me.
      - solardev 2y ago
        Is Musk specifically an authoritarian transhumanist? His recent ramblings seem to me more like someone who's on the spectrum or perhaps just really stoned all the time. They don't seem to congeal into any sort of cohesive philosophy, but maybe I'm just not paying enough attention? Less "Borg Queen" and more "stoner college roommate with too much money and powerful friends, who never learned to censor himself"...
        xenospn 2y ago
        "... who's wearing a MAGA hat and has a vacation home in Russia"
        scarecrowbob 2y ago
        No one owes anyone else ideological consistency, so it's certainly possible Musk is just some dude musing on the world. However, it's also possible that there are finite families of ideas in the world which all have similar flavors and consitencies, and when we have seen many of them we can start to draw conclusions both about their obvious and more nuanced features. We might consider that no one really has a "cohesive philosophy" into which our thoughts congeal: we might not need someone to write a manifesto in order to draw some reasonable conclusions about their thoughts. And, further, when the conclusions we draw about those thoughts (less so about being-of-people, if you will, but about thoughts) are validated, we might take that as data for how well we are listening to what folks are saying. In the case of Musk, since I had been exposed to a lot of ideas about technology in the 90s and 00s, what he has been saying over the last 15 years or so has seemed both very clear and, to my ears, very consistent. And very authoritarian and very anti-humanist.
        solardev 2y ago
        That's fair, and well said!
      - JohnFen 2y ago
        > at the base of a lot of techno-utopianism lies a lot authoritarian and anti-human thought. This is certainly true. At the very least it's obvious in terms of the attitudes that circle has been expressing over the last decade or so.
  - renegade-otter 2y ago
    Pretty much. This Behind the Bastards two-parter was recorded before Musk went full Red Pill: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/part-one-i-do-not-like-elon-musk-very-much/id1373812661?i=1000476632637 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/part-one-i-do-not-like... The host off the bat says that he is conflicted about this episode because of Musk's contributions, but I am confident this would go differently now. Back in 2020 Musk could still pass for an "eccentric billionaire" and not a complete fascist-curious shitbag.
belter 2y ago
[flagged]
rsynnott 2y ago
While he does seem to be going progressively downhill, it started a long time before the Twitter thing. Remember the imaginary cave submarine?
- solardev 2y ago
  That was before Twitter? Wow, it all just kinda blurs together now, one crazy thing after the other...
- renegade-otter 2y ago
  I mean, he called a diver rescuing children a "pedo", and everyone just shrugged and moved on. https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/media/elon-musk-testifies/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/media/elon-musk-testifies/ind... Apparently, you can win a defamation suit by claiming that "yeah, I made it up and just said it". I feel like at the time his celebrity carried him. Not sure this would play today.
Zigurd 2y ago
This "The Twitter sale really broke him, didn't it?" is an under-examined angle: Elon did not want to buy Twitter. He owns it because he was about to lose litigation that would have forced him to buy it or pay what would have to be an enormous settlement - enough to make Twitter's shareholders at least as happy as him buying it. He spent $100M on lawyers before giving up. He spent what is likely to be his most readily liquid $30Billion. That's gone now. He probably thought he could flip it and come out close to even. But now his most accessible money is gone. That's got to leave a mark.
- solardev 2y ago
  > Elon did not want to buy Twitter Maybe not in the end, but he spent significant time, money, and effort in the lead-up to the acquisition. If he never wanted it at all, well, he shouldn't play those games with their board and the public =/ It's that kind of rash (and brash) thoughtlessness that seem to characterize his recent decision-making, in stark contrast to my former hero who built an entire freaking space fleet from scratch... so sad, too bad... power corrupts and all that, I guess.
  - krapp 2y ago
    >in stark contrast to my former hero who built an entire freaking space fleet from scratch... That guy never existed, though. At best Musk hired a team of brilliant engineers who built a space fleet for him, and while that isn't nothing, people acted as if he was Zephram Cochrane building a warp drive out of junk in his backyard, by hand, alone. And by all accounts, he succeeds in spite of himself because his staff is able to handle and redirect his ego and bad judgement (exceptions like the Cybertruck notwithstanding.) That infrastructure just didn't exist at Twitter, where no one could stop him going buck wild. But he's always been that guy, and I'm glad to see the edifice of Elon Musk torn down. No one deserved the kind of blind adoration and hero worship that man got, and still gets.
- ianburrell 2y ago
  Elon was forced to buy Twitter because he made agreement to buy it and then tried to back out. He made the offer freely and signed the agreement. He could have put in clauses that let him back out.
renegade-otter 2y ago
I feel like in general the isolation of COVID, combined with extreme wealth, broke some rich people's brains. Musk has always been an awful person, but people like him sort of knew where the societal red lines were and kept their worst impulses under wraps. Ever since we entered the "post-shame world", he is not hiding his awfulness any longer. He is actually proud of it. Oh, and he is also convinced that he is absolutely hilarious.

Juliate 2y ago

You mean he was more respectable when he didn't talk so much his mind?

solardev 2y ago
Was he really always like that? Or did the fame and megaphone get to him? Kinda sucks :/ He used to be one of my personal heroes, before he got all weird. I miss Musk 1.0.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  He was always like that, as near as I can tell. He became intolerable to me years before any of the Twitter nonsense.
  - scarecrowbob 2y ago
    I get that it makes folks uncomfortable to think that at the base of a lot of techno-utopianism lies a lot authoritarian and anti-human thought. Maybe it doesn't have to be that way. Maybe there is no necessity to believe that all of us mere humans are a weakness which must be transcended on the progressive path to some as-yet unknowable future. But it feels like that undercurrent has always been in much techno-futurist thoughts which we can read in Musk's specific interests and grievances. Maybe that is just a problem with a view of history as the product of historical necessity- maybe it's just easier to see when the changes are specific technological changes instead of more abstract political or economic changes. Anyhow, that's how Musk (and basically anyone who promotes implementing mass, top-down changes to the world) has always felt to me.
    - solardev 2y ago
      Is Musk specifically an authoritarian transhumanist? His recent ramblings seem to me more like someone who's on the spectrum or perhaps just really stoned all the time. They don't seem to congeal into any sort of cohesive philosophy, but maybe I'm just not paying enough attention? Less "Borg Queen" and more "stoner college roommate with too much money and powerful friends, who never learned to censor himself"...
      - xenospn 2y ago
        "... who's wearing a MAGA hat and has a vacation home in Russia"
      - scarecrowbob 2y ago
        No one owes anyone else ideological consistency, so it's certainly possible Musk is just some dude musing on the world. However, it's also possible that there are finite families of ideas in the world which all have similar flavors and consitencies, and when we have seen many of them we can start to draw conclusions both about their obvious and more nuanced features. We might consider that no one really has a "cohesive philosophy" into which our thoughts congeal: we might not need someone to write a manifesto in order to draw some reasonable conclusions about their thoughts. And, further, when the conclusions we draw about those thoughts (less so about being-of-people, if you will, but about thoughts) are validated, we might take that as data for how well we are listening to what folks are saying. In the case of Musk, since I had been exposed to a lot of ideas about technology in the 90s and 00s, what he has been saying over the last 15 years or so has seemed both very clear and, to my ears, very consistent. And very authoritarian and very anti-humanist.
        solardev 2y ago
        That's fair, and well said!
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      > at the base of a lot of techno-utopianism lies a lot authoritarian and anti-human thought. This is certainly true. At the very least it's obvious in terms of the attitudes that circle has been expressing over the last decade or so.
- renegade-otter 2y ago
  Pretty much. This Behind the Bastards two-parter was recorded before Musk went full Red Pill: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/part-one-i-do-not-like-elon-musk-very-much/id1373812661?i=1000476632637 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/part-one-i-do-not-like... The host off the bat says that he is conflicted about this episode because of Musk's contributions, but I am confident this would go differently now. Back in 2020 Musk could still pass for an "eccentric billionaire" and not a complete fascist-curious shitbag.

belter 2y ago

[flagged]

rsynnott 2y ago

While he does seem to be going progressively downhill, it started a long time before the Twitter thing. Remember the imaginary cave submarine?

solardev 2y ago
That was before Twitter? Wow, it all just kinda blurs together now, one crazy thing after the other...
renegade-otter 2y ago
I mean, he called a diver rescuing children a "pedo", and everyone just shrugged and moved on. https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/media/elon-musk-testifies/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/media/elon-musk-testifies/ind... Apparently, you can win a defamation suit by claiming that "yeah, I made it up and just said it". I feel like at the time his celebrity carried him. Not sure this would play today.

Zigurd 2y ago

This "The Twitter sale really broke him, didn't it?" is an under-examined angle: Elon did not want to buy Twitter. He owns it because he was about to lose litigation that would have forced him to buy it or pay what would have to be an enormous settlement - enough to make Twitter's shareholders at least as happy as him buying it. He spent $100M on lawyers before giving up. He spent what is likely to be his most readily liquid $30Billion. That's gone now. He probably thought he could flip it and come out close to even. But now his most accessible money is gone. That's got to leave a mark.

solardev 2y ago
> Elon did not want to buy Twitter Maybe not in the end, but he spent significant time, money, and effort in the lead-up to the acquisition. If he never wanted it at all, well, he shouldn't play those games with their board and the public =/ It's that kind of rash (and brash) thoughtlessness that seem to characterize his recent decision-making, in stark contrast to my former hero who built an entire freaking space fleet from scratch... so sad, too bad... power corrupts and all that, I guess.
- krapp 2y ago
  >in stark contrast to my former hero who built an entire freaking space fleet from scratch... That guy never existed, though. At best Musk hired a team of brilliant engineers who built a space fleet for him, and while that isn't nothing, people acted as if he was Zephram Cochrane building a warp drive out of junk in his backyard, by hand, alone. And by all accounts, he succeeds in spite of himself because his staff is able to handle and redirect his ego and bad judgement (exceptions like the Cybertruck notwithstanding.) That infrastructure just didn't exist at Twitter, where no one could stop him going buck wild. But he's always been that guy, and I'm glad to see the edifice of Elon Musk torn down. No one deserved the kind of blind adoration and hero worship that man got, and still gets.
ianburrell 2y ago
Elon was forced to buy Twitter because he made agreement to buy it and then tried to back out. He made the offer freely and signed the agreement. He could have put in clauses that let him back out.

renegade-otter 2y ago

I feel like in general the isolation of COVID, combined with extreme wealth, broke some rich people's brains. Musk has always been an awful person, but people like him sort of knew where the societal red lines were and kept their worst impulses under wraps. Ever since we entered the "post-shame world", he is not hiding his awfulness any longer. He is actually proud of it. Oh, and he is also convinced that he is absolutely hilarious.