[maxlin]

Saying that Musk "doesn't have the mindset" for betterment of humanity is just ignorant in a very short-sighted way. Sure, he currently has a side project of fixing the US government and ensuring US doesn't stray too far outside of its core interests, but SpaceX and Tesla are still his bread and butter he has spent most of his time on beside this scenic route.

I've followed him closely since ~2016 so I can say this with some conviction. He's exactly the same guy he was back then. He even talks of the exact same things with the same excitement. Sure, "American boots on MARS!" instead of just "boots on Mars" like he did after the inauguration, but it's quite clear he has seen US falling apart as a existential risk for the more lofty goals especially SpaceX has for Humanity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wubITdJ_MCw

[Arkhaine_kupo]

> I've followed him closely since ~2016 so I can say this with some conviction.

Its sad that you fell for it then. Read Phillip Long's post on him, not someone who follows him but someone who has worked with him for years. It should be eye opening in the kind of man he is.

There will be no Mars terraforming, his goal is being the worlds first trillionaire. The emperor has no clothes, the companies run despite him not because of him and the cult of personality only appeals to people who somehow still fall for it.

[maxlin]

Thanks, I think I know him pretty much as there is to know. People will try to shoot him down and project their own demons on him. He's an actual maverick who provably has lead his technological companies to success as a Technological lead.

Here's a take by people who have had actual direct contact with him. https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...

The arguments against his capability to lead cross-field technical operations should be disproven by his successes that he has proven several times in sequence. The argument of him being a fraud is basically hinging on him rolling d20 several times in a row, and only acceptable to those not knowing his personality and attributing his actions to malice (through self-projection of the viewer). Philip's arguments tell as much.

He's done plenty enemies while at it! Wouldn't really expect anything else being as disruptive as raw autism in fixing the species might be. They'll fade.

[Arkhaine_kupo]

> I know him pretty much as there is to know.

Reading puff pieces online is not the way to know a man. He spends money on his PR and you are swallowing it.

> Here's a take by people who have had actual direct contact with him. https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...

The first guy has no concrete examples of Elon choices being against his engineering team recommendations and the last quote about "getting his hands dirty with epoxy" is rehased "and he was there clearing the roadblocks" that train and oil barons would say when something went wrong in their mines.

Like how is the same advertising tactics that worked in 1900 when the US had a literacy rate of below 12% working on you now?

> The arguments against his capability to lead cross-field technical operations should be disproven by his successes that he has proven several times in sequence.

Most of those companies have been bailed out by goverment contacts. That is not an ability to lead a team but an ability to win goverment contracts. This is proven by the fact he literally bought the US election in front of the entire world.

His venturesoutside of already fully financed goverment programs liek space, and EV tech remain huge failures. Boring company, neuralink and Twitter are all abject failures if you look at them from a prespective that isnt "Elon will somehow make it work".

> Philip's arguments tell as much.

Phillip has not only worked side by side with him for years, but invested millions in his ventures. He has more at stake than anyone in those interviews which some are over a decade old and all have interests that align with Elon (either work for him, or are writting a book and need access)

> Wouldn't really expect anything else being as disruptive as raw autism in fixing the species might be.

Fixing the species? The dude has a weird breeding hyperfixation, is autistic, is positively demonstrably short sighted (cutting Lidar out of tesla, saying mars boots before 2020, pushing the fda tests for neuralink).

His best bet to improve the species would be removing himself from the pool, and yet he keeps paying for tube babies with crazy women to polute it further.

[maxlin]

What you just wrote reads like bad LLM output. I read very little "puff pieces". Instead I've followed him and directly what he says for about the last 8 years. And I've seen how the media has turned against him, and him doing mostly the same things he did before is now somehow bad.

Nah. He's the same man. And every common argument against him is so easily shot down. But you don't seem to care and act like a flat earther, given my first link shoots your "counter-argument" down given it's about people you as a HN reader should know saying that the praise said about him is just quite simply true.

>Most of those companies have been bailed out by goverment contacts. To be devil'ls (yours) advocate, NASA did save SpaceX. But. NASA is one of the very few agencies that could hire SpaceX, especially due to things like ITAR. But it is obvious to anyone that SpaceX has always more than deserved those contracts, delivering value that is about 20x as high when compared to NASA's own efforts in cost to orbit, a figure that is bound to go 100x with Starship which is progressing not unlike Falcon 9 which is by far the most successful and most used launch system in the US, and the world.

Tesla benefits from selling some carbon credits yes. Which is by design. Remember that they were THE guys who managed to turn EV's from compromises to cars that can surpass ICE's. Actual good cars instead of inferior hippie mobiles like the G-whiz. Tesla operates in a system that anyone would call very capitalistic and succeeds well, doing its own technology, great products that don't even need advertising to sell, and being one of the most looked after employers by high achievers.

>Boring company, neuralink and Twitter are all abject failures You saying Neuralink is a failure is not just a failure in your humanity but proves your abject ignorance, given it has basically saved a person, giving him his agency back. And you shouting about "puff news pieces" LOL. Kiddo you're losing any sense of believability left. Boring company is being succesfully boring in all aspects. Slow work, but succeeding. Twitter is dead yes, X is the successor who manages to be better with 20% the employees. Use it everyday while Twitter was a censorious hellhole. On X you can say what you want without being systematically censored, something that I not just heard from, but saw personally before.

>breeding hyperfixation

That is not what I was talking about but proves you don't understand the slightest about biology. Not making enough kids makes humanity die, that is just math. Fixing the species means getting humanity back on track to what we were crudely approximately doing till ~2010 after which the western society started getting very self destructive while authoritarian governments rise in power with technology. I think there absolutely is a way to win this without losing ourselves.

>removing himself from the pool

How about you start with yourself given you've contributed absolutely nothing but hate, misinformation and overall sense of envy.

For people that actually care (unlike arkhaine here): https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/01/02/elon-musk-is-n...

[Arkhaine_kupo]

> Instead I've followed him and directly what he says for about the last 8 years.

and you are comparing that to the first hadn experience of some of his closest associates. The dude pays 3 different PR companies full time salaries, you haven't followed him, you have followed his propaganda.

> him doing mostly the same things he did before

When he said that he was proud Tesla got 100% on the lgbtq score 4 years in a row, and that homophobes should nt buy his cars in 2017 has that not changed?

> And every common argument against him is so easily shot down

if "you sound like chatgpt" is your idea of shooting somethign down, then yeah everything is easily shot down.

> Tesla benefits from selling some carbon credits yes.

thats not what I said though. I said the company was saved from bankruptcy due to goverment contracts. For Tesla the credits where only part of the equation. First of all they got a 480 million loan, on almost no interest in 2010. The EV credits of around 7,500 per car totalled a goverment investment of over 3 billion of free money. Despite this Elon said the company was around 1 month away from bankruptcy in 2017 when making the Model 3.

He took 480 million almost for free, and 3.4 billion for free and still was weeks away from insolvency. That company is literally unviable without goverment funding.

> Tesla operates in a system that anyone would call very capitalistic

Goverment funded sports car for tech bros is not a system anyone would call capitalistic. Luxury goods (Veblen) are notoriously unaffected by market laws, thus terrible vehicles, no pun intended, for capitalism to thrive in.

> You saying Neuralink is a failure is not just a failure in your humanity but proves your abject ignorance, given it has basically saved a person, giving him his agency back.

You really need to stop believing everything you read dude. Nolan Arbaugh lost 85% of the neural link connections less than a month after the surgery. He cannot do 90% of the things they showed off in his presentation. Neural link said they could try and help him with software updates, without a timeline.

BCI's are notoriously hard to do, many companies make better products that neural link, without killing thousands of monkeys and using human suffering for presentations to impress dimwits online.

> Boring company is being succesfully boring in all aspects.

Over half its projects have been cancelled. the ones remaining do not give enough funding to pay the employees they have. And multiple sources have corroborated the company only existed to push California to cancel the high speed train project so the dependency on cars and tesla remained. The company was a ruse to enable car dependency over better alternatives. And it will be cleared for parts by some investment fund in the next 5 years.

> X is the successor who manages to be better with 20% the employees.

X has more bots than before, worse reliability, it has no content moderation so gore, pdf, porn, and scams are all up, and it has a way diminished userbase and advertiser base on a platform that was barely breaking even. "better" is certianly a word, but not one that describes twitter nowadays

> Use it everyday while Twitter was a censorious hellhole. On X you can say what you want without being systematically censored

the word cis is banned lmao. You cant even talk about organic chemistry nowadays. But at least you can say the n word while you attempt to do a rug pull on a bunch of porn bots.

Also you know when the platform hid likes? It was the day Elon got caught liking degrading porn about having a small penis. That is a weird day to hide public likes which had been a feature since forever.

> Not making enough kids makes humanity die

Most of the planet is well above replacement rate. Humanity will peak at around 10-12 billion people, we are at 8. We are nowhere near an extinction event level problem.

> ~2010 after which the western society started getting very self destructive while authoritarian governments rise in power

the dude took 20 billion from the Saudi monarchy to buy twitter, he cosied up to Trump a dude who openly denounces democracy, and has praised absolute shitbags like Erdogan who think his illiterate cousin could make a good economic minister (they had the highest inflation on the planet the next year).

The dude is the poster child for venerating authoritarian goverments, he would never speak badly of china because he has a massive factory there. Despite the govermetn openly hating him and giving way more money to local chinese car manufactures. They spit on his face and he says "thank you Xi"

> you've contributed absolutely nothing but hate, misinformation

"misinformation" is quoting his close associates, the economic reports of his own companies and his public statements? Damn, his words are lies?

> For people that actually care (unlike arkhaine here): https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/01/02/elon-musk-is-n...

You took 13 days, came here with a weirdo blog of no relevance but let me just highlight what i think is the cherry on top of this shit sundae.

"Here John repeats a popular talking point (“Elon hates Jews”), but the “great replacement theory” is a ludicrous far-right conspiracy actively promulgated by Trump and his surrogates, and while Elon’s reply managed to get him in the middle of a simmering controversy between certain factions of the American Jewish community and other progressives, it didn’t read to me as antisemitic. "

Elon Musk funder of a dude who promotes antisemetic tropes, who has said things that makes those people think he is one of them well I random indian guy who writes blogs "didnt read it as antisemetic". Also lets ignore the seig heil twice on stage for some reason.

This is the level of unfounded self assurance that describes elon musk fanbois. "I know better than the entire jewish community because I dont think he is racist". Doesnt matter that they have dealt with this for 2 millenia, or that they are keenly aware of dog whistles, or that he has done overtly hate symbols in public, because I KNOW BETTER. You know better than Elon Musk friends because you read a fluff piece 6 years ago.

Dunning Kruger wants your address, they need to make a part 2 of their syndrome and name it after you.

[ProcNetDev]

Look past what he says and into what is actually happening.

He is actively helping take health care from poor people. He is firing thousands of people with families, mortgages and medical bills without cause. He is closing our national parks. All so he can personally have a tax cut.

His ex-wife is frantically posting for him to help with the healthcare of their own son in his replies. He can't even manage his family I don't think he has the betterment of humanity on his mind.

[Difwif]

I believe it's quite easy to look at any humans actions and cherry pick a narrative of malfeasance or malice if that's what you're looking for.

Musk does a lot of things at a very high level publicly so I think it's an even easier task. I'm sure you'll disagree but I believe it's this false narrative and who's creating it that you should be doubting.

Many people don't have a problem with a lot of what Musk has done. He's not perfect and does make mistakes which he openly admits like any sane rational person should. I do believe his good intent is there and he generally tries to right wrongs.

I'm watching closely what he does and sometimes I have my doubts. If I ever see him actually cross a line I'll change my mind. For now, most of the narrative has been pretty typical fake news and timeless partisan disagreement on methods of governance.

[ttpphd]

This is just denialism.

[maxlin]

So ... Because people who could bear families, but could not earn a living are being "left on dire straits", and Elon is against upkeeping such an unearned situation, Elon's the bad guy?

The vision that sees this as bad is obviously tainted by corruption, and is so not worth of care especially as the people leaving their jobs will have a damn good golden parachute.

At least try to argue on the same level.

[xinuc]

There was a time when I was this naive, but it's surely a very long time ago

[maxlin]

Congratulations you're just naive to things that are easier to believe for a weak mind now.

[_joel]

I think you've been drinking the koolaid too much. He's only in it to enrich himself and his cronies. There's a reason he's on course to become a trillionaire and it ain't because of altruism.

[maxlin]

Yeah starting a rocket company is the best way to become rich. As so many before him managed doing that xd

get a grip. Research how financially mad / "irresponsible" that was.

[_joel]

I'm well aware of SpaceX's history. I've read Eric Berger's book and have been a hopper watcher. None of what you said detracts from the fact there's a reason he's on target to becoem a trillionare and it's not altruism. I see you've drunk too much of the koolaid too.

[yard2010]

He is not fixing anything, he is just a human, the kind with flaws, that thinks he isn't.

[maxlin]

The argument here is that Elon thinks he is perfect while he isn't, and that makes everything good he does bad. This can so easily debunked it's not really worth a thought.

[regularjack]

"Fixing" the US government

[maxlin]

If removing bloat isn't fixing, idk what is on your standard.

Do you really think the people he's getting rid of are material to the mission of the agencies themselves, given even those missions are as relevant as they were when they were founded?

X sure is doing well with 20% of the crew regadless of the doomsayers screaming how it would crash at the time xD