[edmundsauto]

Automotive and aerospace are not that similar to social media. People buying into the vision of "get the planet off fossil fuels for transport" and "get this species to Mars" are probably willing to make sacrifices that people working on social media are not.

It's the Halo Effect fallacy to think competence in one field automatically translates to another. Especially when the founder in question has displayed increasingly erratic behavior in the meantime.

Is today's Elon capable of doing what Elon from 15 years ago did at Tesla? I don't think that is necessarily in evidence, much less in a very different industry.

[WalterBright]

Automotive and aerospace are not similar to each other, either. I don't know any other outfit that was successful at both.

> It's the Halo Effect fallacy to think competence in one field automatically translates to another

I didn't say it was. I was responding the notion that Musk blundered into success at Tesla and SpaceX.

[duckmysick]

> Automotive and aerospace are not similar to each other, either. I don't know any other outfit that was successful at both.

Rolls-Royce (of the last century) would qualify, but it was more aero than space.

[bumby]

Saab as well, but that could be a point either way since they went eventually defunct as a car manufacturer

[edmundsauto]

There's a lot to unpack here, for one do we consider those two enterprises to be successes? It seems too early to tell - they do appear to be influential, but the C64 and Palm Pilot were influential without being successful. It's also not clear if they are long term successful (I think Tesla will be, but SpaceX is very much currently dependent on government funding). Finally, it's not clear whether Musk was a critical driver of success - evaluating his contributions based on the outcome of a company is basically resulting.

Look, I don't know if Elon is a genius or an opportunistic parasite with really good PR. It seems unlikely if we ever will know that. What I object to is people pointing at his ultimate financial success and crediting him with the current result of 2 big companies whose future is very much not determined.

When I look at his process from this ant's perspective, I think he is an abusive unstable individual who takes credit for everyone's work and lies a lot. He also flip-flops depending on the wind. Is that success? Not based on my personal values. Have his companies accomplished a lot? Some of them, absolutely.

The definitions and evidence matter a lot, and I personally don't think any of us are qualified to make blanket statements based on incomplete outcomes. Further, I don't think his other companies that require primarily good engineering are very relevant to inherently people problems, like Twitter. My evaluation of how Musk handles people problems is that he is very bad at them, and I anchor my prediction about his Twitter leadership based on that.

[vba616]

What I think makes people skeptical of him is that deep down we all believe in nominative determinism. Who do you think runs a rocket company behind the scenes, "Shotwell" or "Musk"?

[spaceman_2020]

> Automotive and aerospace are not that similar to social media.

Yes. Social media is easier.

> It's the Halo Effect fallacy to think competence in one field automatically translates to another.

This is precisely about leveraging the Halo Effect fallacy. Elon Musk might not know social media, but the markets don't know that, nor do they care. The average retail trader sees "Elon Musk's company" and buys and holds, regardless of absurd PEs.

Musk knows the power his brand has. He's simply going to use that to pump up Twitter's valuation, all through the virtue of his "halo"

[saagarjha]

Dealing with people is generally far harder than pretty much any engineering problem. The same is true of Twitter, because there are no easy answers or even clear goals.

[type-r]

Exactly! I can't fathom that people don't seem to understand there's a comparable amount of new companies started every year in the space, automotive, and social network categories.

[naasking]

> The same is true of Twitter, because there are no easy answers or even clear goals.

There are no easy answers if you want to satisfy everybody. One easy answer is to stop trying to satisfy everybody.

[edmundsauto]

The easiest way to do this would be to make the site completely free of moderation, but that quickly becomes a cesspool. Are there other ways to define the core audience?