Can totally understand that guy, and I hope he follows through on legal action against Musk.
Having a verbal fight is one thing, even throwing around "dirty" language is in some way acceptable among grown-ups, as long as both sides know the limits. One of those limits is that you never, never, never, NEVER accuse your opponent of socially stigmatizing behavior, especially not if you have no basis for doing so (and even if you have evidence for it, it's still kind of bad style to bring that up). Being a pedophile is probably the most stigmatizing accusation possible in todays' society - just the accusation alone, no evidence whatsoever necessary, can destroy the life of perfectly honest people if it "catches on" somehow, and stuff like that quickly catches on and develops a life of its own. Especially when publicized by some guy with a cult-like following of 22 million people on Twitter.
If Musk was a kid, he should have gotten seriously disciplined by his parents for this, in hopes that he'd learn where the limits are. For adults, it's up to the legal system to do this job. To be honest, I have little hope for Musk to learn any new tricks with regard to acceptable limits for his childish temper tantrums, but I nevertheless hope he doesn't get out of this entirely unscathed - this one was just way too far over the line.
I think Elon Musk lacks the empathy to understand the damage he's doing to those around him - family, employees, strangers on the internet - when he's throwing away words like that; I genuinely think he's actually lacking these social skills.
It doesnt' help that Silicon Valley basically made this behavior glamorous - Steve Jobs is the primary exponent of a crass person getting a cult-like following. While I think it's a useful trait while in pursuit of achieving unreasonable things - like ground-breaking design innovation, sending cars in space, expanding a niche car market to mainstream - all these guys, Musk, Jobs, and so on are basically sociopaths, and we shouldn't be afraid to call them as such.
> I think Elon Musk lacks the empathy to understand the damage he's doing to those around him - family, employees, strangers on the internet - when he's throwing away words like that; I genuinely think he's actually lacking these social skills.
It's not just social skills that he lacks, the interview with his first wife[0] where she notes that he regarded her grieving for their first kid (SIDS death at 10 weeks) as "emotionally manipulative"[1] is something else entirely.
I doubt any amount of damages he'd get would even slightly sting Musk, the worst Musk will get is the bad press about this but that's already happening. At least the guy might get some legal cleasing from the stain Musk put on him and a bit of cash in compensation. I hope he follows through because throwing about accusations like that is not on and kids, and some grown-ups, who look up to a man like Musk need to see that he has boundaries of acceptable conduct and he's stepped over them this time.
I supported Musk after he released his e-mail correspondence showing the dive team had requested he continue work with his submarine. I also think Musk genuinely tried to help solve a problem; maybe not with the greatest requirements gathering (though Musk is adamant the submarine would be able to reach the cave and is planning to demonstrate this). Some of the attacks on Musk were terrible and unnecessary.
However, he then sends this baseless tweet. And doubles down on it. It is juvenile, petty and disgraceful behavior. It would seem that everyone is deeply flawed in some way.
And so is everyone else. It's so obvious that we usually don't even about it, except when people need an occasional reminder that their favourite celebrities are human too.
Lets not confuse quiet professionalism with submission and passivity.
That guy was coordinating large amount people in high stress situation. If he would allow everyone to walk on him, lie about him and would not be able with people full of BS, the whole operation would had likely failed.
Well Unsworth had behind him many years of experience diving in these caves and had been instrumental to locating the children and the rescue operation.
Can't blame him for his outburst at Musk's PR stunt
Yea when someone in the public eye forgets the lessons they teach in kindergarten it’s always a little disappointing. I imagine he is mad at the guy, but I wish he would show a little less hubris.
Nobody is perfect. Hope he learns to apologize and be the bigger person because the benefits of that approach for those that are publicly adored cannot be overstated.
You know what, maybe the kindergarden analogy is quite apt. EM seems to have a childlike wonder, drive and openness, which is very powerful when combined with a high quality STEM education and intellect - maybe 'staying a child' comes with good and bad attitudes at the same time?
Twitter jabs are funny until the audience - or participants themselves - start to treat them too seriously. That's when the problem starts. I'm sad to see Elon falling into this trap.
I'm still thinking Musk is on a slippery slope, too many projects, too many claims, too much debt. I don't think social networks are the main factor here.
I agree social media is more of a symptom here. I've been worrying about that recently too. From what I see on-line, I feel like his behaviour has become pretty... erratic. He used to be more focused on solving big problems in the past. I worry he'll go completely off the rails at some point, and destroy all the efforts around space access and Mars.
Musk is one of the most impressive entrepreneurs of our time. But he is also just human. Sometimes "totally fucked up" as you put it is the way we react, even when we shouldn't.
Musk could have chosen to ignore calls for help, but instead he exposed himself to the risk of failure. Then he was told his efforts were just PR and to "stick the submarine up where it hurts" by one of the now famous divers who currently speaks from a position not much less public than Musk's. Being told he had ulterior motives after repeatedly asking the person in charge of the rescue mission if they were sure they wanted his help (as the email shows), and after spending what is likely hundreds of thousands of dollars and days trying to help, is extremely disrespectful. I agree that he should have ignored it or simply rebuked it. But I understand he couldn't.
Can you imagine a response that doesn’t involve libel? How many people did Mark Zuckerberg call out as being pedos after his $100M attempt to save New Jersey schools flopped?
Even if insulted (and how insulting were these previous comments, really?) a random diver speaks for himself, a public figure heading and representing multiple big corporations should be able to keep his mouth shut instead.
He simply told Musk to go away and take his toys with him, before he hurt someone. Was he direct and a little bit rude? Sure, but the overall situation was quite tense, so there wasn't a lot of time for fine detail and detailed explanations.
Goes to show this was all about ego for Musk. Instead of being happy that all the children were rescued, his ego got bruised since they didn't use his submarine -- and he attacks the real heroes. Text book narcissistic behavior.
Also the fanboyism behind Musk is a bit unsettling. I made the mistake of viewing the replies to various tweets surrounding this controversy and there's a worrything amount of enthusiastic fans ready to jump in and defend him by sniping at anyone talking negatively about him. Why anyone would feel the need to "white knight" a billionaire is beyond me.
> Why anyone would feel the need to "white knight" a billionaire is beyond me.
Being a billionaire shouldn't be a negative trait. Yet, it is, because so many of the 1% show lack of empathy and disregard for the common man and a single focus on generating wealth for wealth's sake. Musk does not seem to be in it for the cash, and thus looks different.
Musk is, very transparently, an engineer at heart. He tinkers and creates and takes absolute joy in the creation process and in the result. It just so happens he's also a billionaire. Combine the hacker mentality with lots of cash and you get crazy creations like SpaceX, Tesla or The Boring Company.
Musk's tweets about the sub, if viewed from the perspective of a hacker bragging about a hack, are perfectly natural. As is throwing a car up into orbit.
That the Internet at large jumps to reading these fun, creative actions as "marketing" or "self-promotion" or "billionaire arrogance" is a sign that we, as a collective, lost our innocence long ago, and are unable to take pleasure in creating stuff.
I got a kick out of him sending a car into space, I'm impressed by SpaceX, Tesla and I'm at least curious about the Boring Company.
But what people are annoyed about here is that a very influential person is directing the internet hate machine at someone who he didn't like. Calling someone a paedophile is not a fun creative action in my book. Any defence of this as some kind of engineer-specific personality quirk we can all identify with isn't something I'm going to agree with
For the record: I strongly criticize the pedophile slur. It's infantile, inconsiderate and entirely non-productive. In my comment, I was trying to explain why people admire Musk, but he is full of flaws.
The world, in general, isn't black and white. One must exercise critical judgment.
> It's infantile, inconsiderate and entirely non-productive.
A false accusation of that caliber can destroy an innocent person's life and it cheapens the value of real accusations (specially when said by someone with the kind of cult following that Musk has). It's far, far worse than "infantile", "inconsiderate" or "entirely non-productive."
It's also interesting that people perceive Elon Musk as an engineer because as far as I can see he is primarily a businessman. He got a bachelor in physics but then moved on to earn a bachelor of economics.
Parent was downvoted but shouldn't be. A lot of people really seem to need to believe that Elon Musk designed the falcon rockets or the teslas. This is simply not the case.
What made SpaceX work is that he found most of the good people stuck in bad organisations already in the space sector, put them under one roof (which almost never happens in aerospace with it's goverment-funded pork-barrel contracts), and provided both the money and the will. Having both, rather than one-of, those last two things (the money and the will) are almost unheard of in aerospace anyway, and are a super-power. They gave the Tom Muellers of this world they space they need to do their work, and they had them co-located with the manufacturing, and they cared about manufacturing techniques, and they made a product. It probably was, and maybe still is, the nearest a company has come to taking Skunkwork's crown as an example of how aerospace engineering can be done right.
He likes to geek out, and he has vision, but he's a pusher of engineers rather than an engineer, and he sails very close to the wind with over-pushing his people. To the extent that any historical or fictional comparison is apt, he's more a Henry Ford than a Tony Stark.
You should hear some of his more informal interviews. He did a couple for Y Combinator, available on the podcast. The technical knowledge he shows is lower level than CEO activities provide. He's probably never in the trenches, but surely talks a lot with people who do.
Also the hate for Musk is a bit unsettling. I made the mistake of viewing the replies to various tweets surrounding this controversy and there's a worrything amount of unreasonable haters ready to jump in and attack him by sniping at anyone talking positively about him. Why anyone would feel the need to attack a helpful narcissist is beyond me.
Well the British diver guy, Vernon Unsworth, did start with the innuendo attacks first, telling Musk "he can stick it where it hurts", referring to the sub.
Calling it a publicity stunt and getting called a pedo in return is way out of line. Musk looks like he's lashing out and it makes you wonder if he does this regularly.
As with his questionable donations[1], this risks shifting people's opinions.
But I see that frequently. There was all the kerfuffle around head of Tesla Autopilot quitting over Musk behaviour that also descended to namecalling. That painter guy who took issue with Musk stealing his artwork that ended up the same. That earnings conference call which felt like it could go there. Not on Twitter there are lots of stories of management by yelling.
To jump to calling someone a pedophile is reprehensible.
And some of Musk's calibre should ... know better.
And frankly, I have zero tolerance for this sort of thing. Sling around accusations of illegal actions against children isn't something we should take lightly.
As far as I'm concerned Musk doesn't deserve anything, other than destitution.
> As far as I'm concerned Musk doesn't deserve anything, other than destitution.
So two angry men shout invectives at each other, and you believe one of them deserves to have their life completely destroyed as a consequence? That sounds a little disproportionate.
I see your point, but personally I'd prefer if people were less willing to entertain destroying each other over spoken words. As it is now, the diver's life seems unaffected, so the negative consequences failed to materialize.
I definitely believe that for such unfounded, public accusation from a de-facto celebrity, a very public apology and some meaningful monetary damages are warranted. I feel this would suffice as a deterrent.
Those two things are on completely different scales. The diver had personally seen the cave and knew the obstacles, and was simply telling a jumped-up billionaire playboy to please go away with his silly counterproductive and possibly dangerous toys, in a manner fitting a tense and dramatic situation.
Musk then goes flying off the handle with a completely baseless and and frankly insane accusation, because his ego got hurt.
Quite obviously. Also "the Tesla CEO appears to be committed to proving his design would have worked. He wrote: 'We will make [a video] of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo.'" I mean, come on, that's not that great a "design" that you (or your engineers for that matter) made up but a stopgap solution. Nothing wrong with that, thanks for helping. But just let go now.
It's not just that he can go from zero to full-on character assassination in three messages, not just that he doesn't care who he does that in front of, but also that he very evidently values a dollar bill with his signature as more than $1.
It's openly-expressed megalomania.
People have joked about him being one failure away from turning full super-villain, but if he does stuff like this again, he really risks the stock markets destroying everything. Tesla lives and breaths on outside funding at the moment. It can be snuffed out.
>he very evidently values a dollar bill with his signature as more than $1.
Wait, is it not objectively true that the autograph of a famous person tends to add value to the things they sign?
Ebay has a category for Musk-autographed stuff. People post stuff in that category, and sometimes it sells. Are you saying stuff advertised as having been signed by him would be worth more without the signature? :-)
Elon Musk seems to be a very undiplomatic, passive aggressive person. His behavior makes it look like he is not used to repercussions for his socially unacceptable behavior. His public social media self harming / suicide attempts are bizarre.
Musk gets told his PR stunt is unwelcome and should bugger off, and his reaction is to call one of the people who risked their lives to save those kids a paedophile?
What a narcissistic prick. Confirms his stupid sub was nothing more than ego-stroking.
I love what Elon Musk is doing with SpaceX and Tesla, but he really needs to constrain his ego on Twitter. He's a big time celebrity now, and people are going to talk about him. Some of them will be negative, and some will be uncharitable. Getting into fights all the time isn't going to help him archive great things. (and his fans should stop cheering him on)
This is so unbecoming and tacky. He has betrayed an unbelievable level of egotism and immaturity and embarrassed himself permanently.
The problem seems to be he is convinced he is smarter than everyone else and being dismissed obviously did not sit well with him. The most important thing is all the children were rescued safely and obviously the rescuers have distinguished themselves.
This is a lesson for all those convinced about their own smartness not to assume everyone else is stupid, and the importance of humility and maturity.
I don't know. How would you feel if someone would call you a pedophile on social media, but deleted the comment after a couple of hours?
Especially by a person who has a huge following and every word he writes can have a massive impact on peoples perception. As a lot of people pointed out, the term pedophile can be very damaging on one's life. Now put these two things together...
With great power, comes great responsibility. When you are a leader you have to be careful what you say and do. Granted, we are all human, but deleting a tweet doesn't even come close to an apology.
Why does Musk insist on pursuing a playground vendetta over this? The submarine was a quick hack and turns out it didn't quite work. That's perfectly ok -- that's what quick hacks are like. It would be forgotten in a week as he moves on to the next shiny engineering challenge to keep his audience thrilled.
Instead, he doubles down on every real or perceived slight against him. Donald Trump does the same. It must be an effective PR tactic because these two American luminaries do it, but it's frustrating to watch how this stuff consumes so much media oxygen from real issues.
The short answer is, this article completely omits the part of the diver's comments that actually made the headlines originally. He also said it was just a PR stunt, and everyone latched onto this as proof that Elon Musk was an evil person for even trying and that the dive team who'd actually rescued the kids confirmed it. It was only after Elon's subsequent morally-bankrupt smear made for a better avenue of attack that the media started downplaying the diver's comments as just some minor technical criticism rather than iron-clad proof Musk was a monster taking advantage of kids' peril.
One problem I have with the reception of this story is that most people think he attacked one of the British divers that were the first to find the boys, whereas in fact, the diver in question is a different person. The article describes him as "instrumental" but that encompasses a lot of the people involved, including the farmers whose lands got destroyed by the pumped water. I am not trying to down play this guy's contribution by any means but he is not who most people think he is.
That being said, both men engaged in a juvenile uncivilized exchange, initiated by the British diver, so there's no need to get courts involved.
There have been feature articles about Unsworth describing his role, but I can’t find them since the top 50 google results are about Musk calling him a pedo. IIRC, his role involved have expert knowledge of the caves, more or less pinpointing the location of the soccer team, and convincing the Thai government to call on the British divers who eventually found the boys. Seems pretty substantial to me: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/10/family-british-d...
Telling a billionaire playboy to go away and take his silly toys with him, in a direct and clear manner befitting the drama of the situation is not a "juvenile uncivilized exchange".
Having a verbal fight is one thing, even throwing around "dirty" language is in some way acceptable among grown-ups, as long as both sides know the limits. One of those limits is that you never, never, never, NEVER accuse your opponent of socially stigmatizing behavior, especially not if you have no basis for doing so (and even if you have evidence for it, it's still kind of bad style to bring that up). Being a pedophile is probably the most stigmatizing accusation possible in todays' society - just the accusation alone, no evidence whatsoever necessary, can destroy the life of perfectly honest people if it "catches on" somehow, and stuff like that quickly catches on and develops a life of its own. Especially when publicized by some guy with a cult-like following of 22 million people on Twitter.
If Musk was a kid, he should have gotten seriously disciplined by his parents for this, in hopes that he'd learn where the limits are. For adults, it's up to the legal system to do this job. To be honest, I have little hope for Musk to learn any new tricks with regard to acceptable limits for his childish temper tantrums, but I nevertheless hope he doesn't get out of this entirely unscathed - this one was just way too far over the line.