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Comment by devishard | Hacker News Reader

> here is a man who twice bet his personal fortune on these companies with no other apparent motive besides making the world a better place.

That has to be the most naive statement I've seen on Hacker News.

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That insult would be more impactful if backed up with an explanation of why you feel that way.

And, once that explanatory paragraph was written, you could remove the insult and just let it stand on its own.

Almost anyone can think of other apparent motivations Musk might have without my help and indeed without much thought. It doesn't require explanation.

I also think that people should be strongly discouraged from making claims like "here is a man who twice bet his personal fortune on these companies with no other apparent motive besides making the world a better place." That statement actively decreased the quality of discussion. Hopefully bronz will think before posting in the future.

There are communities where insulting the author of a comment is an acceptable way to make an author think critically about their statement, but this is not one of them. That your comment consisted entirely of an insult and your point needed to be assumed from the subtext points towards it not being very conducive for discussion itself. That you chose to address a comment that you think lowered the quality of discussion with a comment that was even worse in that respect is unfortunate. Your goal was good, your methods were not.

Hacker News, where saying it nicely is valued more than saying anything useful.

Where discussion is prioritized over personal expression. It's not just about what you say, but about how you say it, because it doesn't matter how insightful you are if nobody understands you. It's not about being nice for niceness sake, it's about emphasizing methods of communication that work.

That depends very much on what you consider "working". I don't see any value whatsoever in what bronz was communicating, and any discussion that starts from that is going to be equally vapid. That's not "working" to me.

It's about what you say AND how you say it.

> I don't see any value whatsoever in what bronz was communicating, and any discussion that starts from that is going to be equally vapid.

That's fine. What I'm referring to doesn't actually have to yield further discussion. Some people will take belittlement, accept it as an indication they should have thought through their position better (if that was indeed the cause). Others will immediately become defensive and start responding to something that doesn't really need a response. Sometimes it just depends on the mood of the person. Not using insults (or at least making them clearly supplemental to the supported point) helps avoid this.

Insults are appeals to emotion. Emotion is exactly what you don't want when you are trying to avoid useless discussion. I understand the pull, and I'm sure I fall into the trap myself from time to time. Sometimes someone says something that seems divorced from reality, and you find the premise so absurd that you find it hard to address it seriously. It feels good to strongly call out the absurdity for what it is, and people who agree enjoy seeing it, but ultimately it makes it more about you than the point. For example, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment of your original comment. I just think it's slightly self defeating when the discussion is between many people in a group setting, because it often yields more useless comments as people dig in on their sides.

> It's about what you say AND how you say it.

That's the exact point I was trying to make in the prior comment.

What evidence did the OP provide?

never underestimate the cult of elon :^)

HackerNews: Build apps, expect billions in valuation.

Elon Musk: Pour fortune into building actual things, get shit on by startup culture.

Haters gonna hate.

I actually have nothing against Elon Musk. I don't expect anyone to do things completely altruistically. But it's ridiculous to claim that this is just purely altruistic.

Purely altruistic? Probably not. But spending hundreds of millions of dollars on ventures that have an extremely high likely of failure? He's definitely not in it primarily for the cash.

On what basis are you claiming that his ventures have an extremely high likelihood of failure?

> He's definitely not in it primarily for the cash.

I don't see any evidence whatsoever for this assertion.

im not a member. but perhaps he has a cult for a reason.

Perhaps people worship wealth and power, yes.

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