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Comment by _jal | Hacker News Reader

I suspect it would matter, for at least two reasons.

For that to work, you'd need a particular sort of senior management arrangement, not just to leave him alone, but to take a lot of heat for his eccentricities. You need particular people capable of forming unusual understandings for that to work. And there would also necessarily end up being limits - there's only so far folks will cover someone else's bets.

The second reason is Musk's ego. I think he'd find a demotion humiliating, and if he's not treated as a Master of the Universe Superhero-CEO, I bet even money he'd behave worse, pick fights with his minders, etc.

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Research what he did when he was fired as CEO of PayPal. He made sure the company had good management by making sure Peter Thiel came back (even though they weren't the best of friends at the time), and he stayed quiet, allowing the team to execute and make him rich. Now that you know this, will you update your beliefs about his ego?

Essentially, he's egotistical, but if someone forces him to back down, he's also mature enough to handle it.

Perhaps it's more accurate to say he's driven, no nonsense and shrewd?

Yeah. Of course he wears his ego proudly. You don't rise to that level without above average chutzpah. But I think that's more a side show than the featured event.

You mean like how he has doubled down twice on accusing a random diver of being a paedophile?

Not a random diver, it was someone who was a domain expert and dared to critique the proposed engineering solution from Musk.

You can draw a very short dotted line to all the automation they eventually had to rip out of the Model 3 production line.

On the plus side he's a visionary with a lot of cash. The downside is that his ego wont let him take advice from people he doesn't agree with.

The latter character flaw is a recipe for disaster if left unchecked over the long term. This move is good for Tesla.

> critique

Elon Musk should not have said what he did, but advocating for sodomy is not critique. Some cultures have the death penalty for sodomy whereas the acceptance of critique is celebrated as wise in most cultures. The character flaw of the news is that in cases like this, it does not seek to create a peaceful resolution between the two parties, but instead blows up their differences as much as possible. Both of these men tried to save the lives of kids.

I agree that Twitter censure is likely to be of benefit to Tesla. Starving the news of Elon Musk content is a good thing. It will hurt the profits of attention-derived news. Plus, the doom of the ICE industry is rearing its head. So they can talk breathlessly about that and criticize the existing auto manufacturers for not seeing the writing on the wall once they figure out a new strategy to maximize their attention derived profits. I'm cynical enough that I figure this story shift will probably happen around the time that Tesla starts taking out television ads.

Wu... wut? "Advocating for sodomy is not a critique" ???

What Elon did:

> Elon Musk has escalated his baseless attacks against a British diver, claiming without evidence that the man who helped rescue children from a cave in Thailand was a “child rapist” in an email to a reporter. [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/04/elon-musk...]

Yeah, the news doesn't really bother giving the full story with much subtlety. You can go look up what the guy actually said. There is a video of it. Basically, he figured that Elon Musk was trying to help just to look good with no substance behind the action. So he told Elon Musk he should shove the submarine that they (SpaceX team) built up Elon's ass. Pretty poor showing all around.

Makes for a great story though. Much outrage. The madder you are, the more irrational you have become? The better. Many clicks. Much profit. Much circus. Totally get why the reporter violated the principle of off the record conversations in order to earn themselves money and create drama. People make money, because you just linked this article. That is how this works. This is how social media generated news tends to make its money. If the story didn't outrage you enough for you to share that link with me? They failed.

But don't let them delude you into thinking its in the best interest of either party being reported on to be known for their worst moments. Nor for the public opinion of both people to be shaped by these moments. Both of these people tried to save the lives of children. The character of both people are very likely to be somewhat congruent with that. I presume innocence until shown otherwise with regard to the accusations leveled. It isn't a story of interest to me without evidence which backs it. I refuse to join either mob.

A corollary of this is for-pay news cares more for its readers than free news. You ought to pay for your information, if you want to incentivize getting good information.

Saying "shove it up your ass" is a common idiom that is, while rude, not "advocating for sodomy".

(Which, by the way, is something that is generally A-okay - "sodomy" refers to gay (usually anal) sex, and Western societies have generally decided that's not a crime anymore.)

Wow, okay. This is still an incredibly bizarre point:

>Some cultures have the death penalty for sodomy whereas the acceptance of critique is celebrated as wise in most cultures

Anyway, he actually said Elon Musk to "stick the submarine where it hurts" and called it a PR stunt. Elon then responds with this tweet, which I think is relatively appropriate:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016960469737693184

Elon then also made this statement:

https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/1018513062855364608

And a series of other tweets doubling down on the sentiment. This is insane and depraved. You can argue that this is all inflamed by the media, outrage culture , etc, but at the end of the day, the CEO of a hugely popular tech company took to twitter (where he has 23m followers) to spread vile and baseless accusations about someone.

He made these tweets originally and publicly in JULY. It was only recently (and after apologizing) that he REPEATED the accusations to Buzzfeed news. And the buzzfeed reporter also preempts your accusations that the emails were leaked improperly ("He prefaced the email with "off the record" though I did not agree to that condition. Off the record is a two-party agreement.")

> Both of these people tried to save the lives of children

Yah, sure. But one of them also took to their social media and their millions of followers to accuse the other of being a pedophile, and then repeated the accusation, and then apologized, and then REPEATED the accusation again months later. With no proof. And so Musk can both be someone who tried to save the lives of children and a piece of garbage who is prone to emotional outbursts that can do real damage to real people.

> This is still an incredibly bizarre point:

Yeah, bad way to make my point. I know that there is very clear adversarial search for and an adversarial amplification and adversarial provocation of all Elon Musk's flaws. This amplification involves a game of telephone in which their is mounting outrage which turns 'shove it where it hurts' into 'dared to critique the proposed engineering solution'. I'm trying to introduce reality again in the hope of stopping the mob mentality death threats toward Unsworth and the harming of the mission of electrification of transport. People are intentionally trying to help feed this system, to see what happens [1]. I've seen enough of what happens to know this is a bad idea.

Pretty sure the right thing to do is let the conversation die. Due process will bring much more justice than social media amplification.

[1]: https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/status/1008405211432570880

I think you are trying too hard to defend Musk. There is (to me) an immeasurable difference between "shove it up your ass" (which is telling Musk to do something), and "you are a paedophile" (which is saying the diver is a something, for which in almost every country in the world you would go to prison for). He then repeated the accusation, repeatedly, saying he is sure it is true.

The guy is now suing Musk, which really is (in my opinion) his only choice, as otherwise many people might assume the accusation is true (as Musk is so sure, and even asked why he wasn't being sued as a response)

> There is (to me) an immeasurable difference between "shove it up your ass" (which is telling Musk to do something), and "you are a paedophile" (which is saying the diver is a something, for which in almost every country in the world you would go to prison for). He then repeated the accusation, repeatedly, saying he is sure it is true.

> The guy is now suing Musk, which really is (in my opinion) his only choice, as otherwise many people might assume the accusation is true (as Musk is so sure, and even asked why he wasn't being sued as a response)

I agree.

I still don't see how that really applies. I agree that Musk is subject to a lot of scrutiny, and a lot of negative coverage in general. But in this case, he is absolutely in the wrong, and what he did and continues to do is despicable. This wasn't a case of the media taking his statements out of context or misrepresenting his views, and it's disingenuous to try and roll this event into the category of 'unfair media sensationalism'.

Tesla wouldn't exist if Musk took "advice from people he doesn't agree with". It's easy to point to model 3 production but what about all the other instances he has proved the nay sayers wrong? Entrepreneurs are generally not people who take advice from people saying it can't be done, instead they prove it to themselves.

That's fine when your a startup but as the business matures you're approach much reflect the shift.

> You can draw a very short dotted line to all the automation they eventually had to rip out of the Model 3 production line.

Given his large-scale visions, I suspect the attempt at extreme automation was intended as a proof of concept about fully automated manufacturing for off-planet use.

Yes, that's the gist I got out of his behaviour at X.com when they merged with Cofinity as well (from the book The PayPal Wars). He wanted to turn it into a full Microsoft shop, and and he wanted to change the name to X. To sum it up: people disagreed, and there were setbacks after setbacks with the former. When he put through the latter, there was a small internal struggle and Peter Thiel become interim CEO.

Everything I could find says the board asked Thiel to come back, not Musk... In fact, supposedly they fired Musk and hired Thiel back while Musk was flying internationally, and had announced they change at CEO before he landed.

Knowing that, it would explain his tendency to make sudden pronouncements and try to stay at the office/factory at all hours.

Went back to the sources, and it seems you're right on the Thiel thing. He did make peace with Thiel and Levchin pretty fast though, and even invested more money into paypal after he was kicked out (citation: the Ashley Vance book on Elon) which was my main point -- he didn't blow shit up or incite a rebelion, he just stayed on the sidelines and supported the team like a trooper.

You made two separate points, and the one you lead with was that he recruited Thiel after being fired... which isn't true. Also, "not blowing shit up" especially when he has money involved != 'staying on the sidelines and supporting the team like a trooper'.

Not the OP but having followed Musk for a long time, I think his ego is enormous and that PayPal anecdote doesn't change that. Few people are more sensitive to criticism than Musk.

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