[erokar]

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.

[smcl]

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.

[sergiosgc]

> 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.

It is a shame.

[smcl]

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

[sergiosgc]

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.

[luord]

> 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."

[ofrzeta]

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.

[ballooney]

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.

[sergiosgc]

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.

[Brotkrumen]

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.

[postmeta]

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.

That's what Musk was responding to I think.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-15/thai-cave-rescue-diver...

[xvf22]

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.

[1] https://thinkprogress.org/elon-musk-house-gop-contributions-...

[TeMPOraL]

> it makes you wonder if he does this regularly

Probably not, as otherwise you'd see news like this frequently. After all, Twitter is public. So let's not generalize this incident too much.

[thraway180306]

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.

[icebraining]

"Pedo guy" is not an innuendo. Plus Unsworth's words may have been crass, but they weren't an accusation of anything. There's really no comparison.

[obituary_latte]

>Unsworth's words may have been crass, but they weren't an accusation of anything

To be fair, he accused Elon’s effort of being a pr stunt. Doesn’t justify the response but it was an attack of sorts.

[agumonkey]

Lucky for Elon he has the technology to run as far away as possible from the shame

[masklinn]

Calling somebody a pedophile is not even remotely in the same galaxy as hinting that somebody should take their stupid idea and shove it up their ass.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Yeah but...

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.

[TeMPOraL]

> 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.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Yes.

Calling someone a pedophile is what you do when you want to destroy someones life.

And I'll continue to believe Musk deserves the worst of all possible worlds until he makes a public apology, streamed live.

Zero tolerance cuts both ways.

[TeMPOraL]

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.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Here's the public apology. Good on him.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1019472152796381185

Nonetheless, his actions against me do not justify my actions against him, and for that I apologize to Mr. Unsworth and to the companies I represent as leader. The fault is mine and mine alone.

And then he goes on to launch a special event where he gives away ETH and BTC. So I guess that's kinda of nearly almost giving money to a kids charity? It's something at least.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

I agree, that's what I'm saying.

If he's prepared to go around slinging that accusation, then I have no respect for him at all.

The best possible outcome would be if he makes a public apology, and approaches the guy in an attempt to make reparations.

Just a simple: "Yeah, look, that was out of line. I'm seeing an anger management psychologist in an effort to curb my behaviour, and I'll donate a million to a children's charity of your choice."

[KozmoNau7]

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.

[ddalex]

That's like ten orders of magnitude lighter than calling somebody a pedo...

[curiousgal]

I found it quite dishonest by The Guardian to not mention that.

[_Codemonkeyism]

The Guardian did

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk...

[ofrzeta]

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.

[happertiger]

That’s really the thought that went through my head exactly.

[agumonkey]

Reminds me I need a few book about narcissistic traits.

[Double_a_92]

I assume he must have been heavily intoxicated at that point.

Not trying to defend him or anything... I just can't imagine how any public person could go that low. He must have known how hard that would backlash.