[concordDance]

As far as I can tell he hasn't personally done much worse than say things on twitter that at least a third of people agree with, broken SEC rules and run companies his way.

As far as evil goes he isn't even going to be the evillest person in a room of 10 random people.

That said, the echo chamber effects will continue to get worse as the media continues to pile on him.

[hef19898]

Your statement hugely underestimates the influence someone like Elon has.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

I'd respect Elon critics more if they frequently noted that they grade Elon more harshly due to his high level of influence, but I rarely see them do that.

Ultimately in a democracy, everyone is entitled to their opinion. There are lots of people who think the way Elon does, but most of them aren't as prominent about it as Elon is. Seems to me that in a healthy democracy, we shouldn't be particularly upset if an opinion that's common among the general population also has some representation among the elites. https://today.yougov.com/topics/economy/explore/public_figur...

Indeed, if this weren't the case, and elites had wildly different opinions than common people (and also more influence), you could make the case that we were living in a plutocracy or an oligarchy, not a democracy. So Elon's willingness to say aloud what many common people think privately is pushing us away from that plutocracy/oligarchy failure mode.

I think Elon has made major mistakes -- funding of OpenAI being the biggest, from the point of view of humanity's survival. But the hate he gets rarely seems well-justified or rational. Here's my theory for what's going on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38046411

[hef19898]

No idea about the others, I do grade Elon as harsh as I'd grade everyone else who does the same things. I only know about his attics the other peoples because of his public profile.

The danger I see, because already happened more than once, is that once certain opinions are publicly acceptable, those opinions risk becoming policy. And once those policies get enacted, as history showed, a lot of inncent people suffer.

And with Musks outsized crowd of fanboys, he is even more dangerous than he would be simply controlling Twitter.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

>The danger I see, because already happened more than once, is that once certain opinions are publicly acceptable, those opinions risk becoming policy. And once those policies get enacted, as history showed, a lot of inncent people suffer.

This sort of reasoning doesn't help us identify correct opinions or good policies. I could just as easily say: "If critics are silenced, the people silencing critics may be allowed to dictate policy. And once the people who silence critics get their policies enacted, as history showed, a lot of innocent people suffer."

In a theocracy, the dictator can make arguing for atheism a crime, on the grounds that: "Arguing for atheism causes people to go to hell. A lot of innocent people will suffer. Therefore, we throw atheists in jail, in order to save innocents."

My basic position is: If your ideas are strong, you should be competent to argue with those who disagree. If your ideas are weak, you should not bully others into submission so you can enforce weak ideas.

[hef19898]

Insimply explained why I argue against right wing opinions everywhere I encounter them. And I am all for having those arguements. Not being American, I see the reasoning behind certain limits of free speech, advocating for hate and violence for example. It should be up to the courts to act on those limits, censorship of opinions has to be avoided. I have zero issue with opinions having consequences so.

And yes, we have seen time and again that, as soon as othering people becomes policy, really bad things happen. That othering starts with words, and the political right are those using those words, and ideologies, far more often than the political left. And it is the right who does that othering on things like ethnicity, sexe, religion, skin color... The left tends to other based on opinion, which while still bad, is a far cry from actually argueing for interning said others in camps, excluding them from voting, access to health care...

[concordDance]

I think it's worth noting how the right sees things:

Many on the right would say the left others people based on ethnicity, orientation and sex (primarily against straight white men).

They would also say that leftists have far higher levels of support for using violence in response to words ("punch a nazi").

They also see a symmetry in banning support for "hate and violence" and banning support for abortion. "Surely saying "transwomen aren't women!" isn't worse than advocating for the murder of hundreds of millions of babies?!"

-----

In general it is extremely hard to come up with rules for what you can and can't say without already presupposing a particular political viewpoint is the right one. Which is putting the cart before the horse really.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

>That othering starts with words, and the political right are those using those words, and ideologies, far more often than the political left.

That's not obvious. Here is one US college professor (well-known open borders libertarian) on what he sees on campus: https://betonit.substack.com/p/orwellian-othering

>The left tends to other based on opinion, which while still bad, is a far cry from actually argueing for interning said others in camps, excluding them from voting, access to health care...

An editor for Huffington Post South Africa defended a post she published arguing that white men shouldn't be allowed to vote, saying: "[The] underlying analysis about the uneven distribution of wealth and power in the world is pretty standard for feminist theory". https://qz.com/africa/966763/huffington-post-south-africa-ed... What does that tell you about feminist theory?

In any case, the most important point is: I've never seen Elon Musk argue for interning others in camps, excluding people from voting, or excluding people from access to health care. In my eyes, your argument makes about as much sense as me saying that you should be banned from Hacker News because you sound vaguely communist, and Joseph Stalin killed a lot of people.

[gary_0]

Demagoguery and personality cultism never ends well. You'd think humanity would have learned by now.

[s1artibartfast]

Nobody is harmed by people thinking Einstein or Mother Teresa were great and not worthy people. Same for Gandi and MLK, if you choose which aspects to value and respect.

It is useful to have examples of people who made a positive impact on the world.