Elon Musk: The Recode interview
recode.net
recode.net
Kara: What’s Twitter? Okay, let’s start with Twitter. I have an obsession with Twitter, too, and an addiction. What happens with you and Twitter?
Elon: Well, I tweet interesting things pretty much as they come to me, and probably with not much of a filter.
Kara: And why?
Elon: I find it entertaining. I think, “Oh, other people might find this entertaining.” Sometimes they do.
Kara: Just at night? What are you, at home you’re doing this?
Elon: Yeah. Mostly at home. I spend a lot less time on Twitter than people probably think. It’s like maybe 10-15 minutes or something.
Kara: Yeah, well people pay attention when you do that.
And then he continues on to legitimize his tone by showing his prowess in entrepreneurship and science:
Kara: Do you take criticism to heart correctly?
Elon: Yes.
Kara: Give me an example of something if you could.
Elon: How do you think rockets get to orbit?
Kara: That’s a fair point.
Elon: Not easily. Physics is very demanding. If you get it wrong, the rocket will blow up. Cars are very demanding. If you get it wrong, a car won’t work. Truth in engineering and science is extremely important.
Kara: Right. And therefore?
Elon: I have a strong interest in the truth.
Kara: All right. And you are —
Elon: Much more than journalists do.
I think people find this kind of backed-up braggadocio incredibly entertaining and exciting to watch, it makes Elon musk an irresistible personality to follow.
At least from what you've quoted, I have a hard time seeing your point. Seems to be a fairly conservative conversation from a 47 year-old entrepreneurial billionaire physicist, and an interviewer. She asks questions and he gives her straightforward answers with no fluff.
While I would agree that he (clearly) doesn't play by the rules of mortals (how could you, and get to where he's gotten?), I'd hardly call this a matter of he just doesn't care about the interpersonal social status dynamics at play
Bureaucracy, and coded ways of doing things, seem to be irresistible to many.
He types some words into a phone, presses an enter key, and a decent subset of the world loses their minds.
Golly gosh.
If I were him, I'd be doing it for the amusement factor alone.
The "funding secured" tweet wasn't harmless, it was a lie that gave a false valuation basis for Tesla at $420. If he was just an employee or outsider that wouldn't matter, but as the CEO he should know better.
The $420 thing didn’t hurt grandma’s pension fund or long term buy-and-holders. It hurt day traders, options traders, shorts, and other gamblers.
Traders have a right to accurate information from the officers of the company, which is the whole reason we have regulations in the first place.
You really just don't actually want that.
Do the thing, get fined (obviously we should set the fine high enough that it's more than a speed bump), sorted.
We don't want the thing to happen because it causes inefficiency in markets, bad outcomes, etc.
Moralizing it doesn't really serve a purpose.
In that specific situation, he performed an action, which resulted in a disciplinary action based on some rule somewhere by the SEC.
Some traders won, some lost. I've worked both as, and around traders for a decent period of time. It is what it is.
As far as I'm concerned, it makes life exciting.
I think any concept of 'harm' is pretty far removed from that.
In short, yes, in life, things happen. Other things happen as a result of those things.
We're all here to have fun, in the end.
If you make a snap financial judgement based on a single tweet, you deserve to lose money.
I think they follow him because he created Tesla, Space-X and other things. Braggadocio without results to back it up won't take him as far.
I can only speak for myself but yes, exactly this. Didn't they model the movie Tony Stark after him? I like that character for the same reason; he's confident, he's cocky, he does what he wants, he doesn't really care what others think, he's not afraid to offend and he's generally entertaining.
Sometimes he crosses the line, example being calling that guy a pedo, but come on... we've all crossed a line before and said something out of frustration or misguided hate. When my father was terminally ill, he died 12 days before my 13th birthday, I wanted one of those WWWJD (what would Jesus do) bracelets that were huge in the mid to late 90's while we were at a checkout counter somewhere. He said no and absolutely would not buy it for me, I lashed out and said "I hate you!" which legitimately hurt my father, I didn't mean it, I didn't even think about it, it just flew out of my mouth. Musk does the same thing, sure he doesn't seem to show remorse when he does but ehhhh when you're as high profile as him sometimes it might be worse for you personally to apologize and retract something because the fallout might be greater than if you just wait for the next news cycle.
Iron Man the character was created in 1963.
Elon Musk was born in 1971.
The actor of Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) did say in 2011 he was inspired in part by Elon Musk when developing his character, but that was 7 years ago now and certainly predates some of Elon Musk's more notorious antics.
We all certainly cross the line and should be forgiven for it, but the standards are different when you're a public leader.
In retrospect, I've changed my mind. It isn't healthy for an industry to only have reporters who softball every interview, who just parrot crap from press releases. In tech, that's close to what we have. It's allowed companies to get away with a lot of shady nonsense.
So these days I'm really thankful that tech has a Kara Swisher.
Here's the question I've been wondering: How does such an interviewer manage to keep getting these historically important interviews?
Agreed, I used to listen to her podcast but she can be very agenda-pushing and condescending if someone even remotely has a different belief than her.
I mean, if you want to do that that's fine be like Adam Carolla, a comedian, and market yourself as such, but if you're doing it as a 'journalist' you need to be impartial.
They're both self-made billionaires who built their companies on risky debt financing, and they both have narcissistic traits and an apparent "god complex," as well as difficulty accepting criticism.
And Trump is far from a self-made billionaire - where are you getting your news?
Your comparison is unreasonably loose.
Both Musk and Trump are great at playing to what their base wants and have made themselves look like heroes to their supporters.
Likewise, risk is relative - it depends on if the people with the money find it too risky to invest or not, so clearly they didn't think it was too risky, nor did Elon for him to be willing to take it.
Re: Interview - I didn't watch the interview, what are you referencing that he referenced in the WSJ article? My guess is it wasn't accurate or clear enough in his mind, meaning it was a "half truth" and too open to interpretation.
Once again your further attempt to compare Elon and Trump is unreasonably loose. Trump plays his base with lies, Elon isn't playing any game - he's having fun certainly when he does things like throwing shade on the SEC for things relating to what he disagrees with like short sellers, and with things like selling not-a-flamethrowers, however he doesn't blatantly lie constantly - and I'd like you to reference with a reliable source even a single confirmed lie that Elon has said?
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776 https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-elon-musk-settles-wit...
Question for you. Do you have good credit where you could go to a bank and get a credit card, if you don't already have one? That bank would have access to your credit score, and you probably know based on your credit score what amount of credit you'd be able to secure, right? I could have used a different word than secure, however secure fits for this example. It's reasonable to believe similarly that the people who he had spoken to multiple times (and who we know have the available capital to invest) - who he trusted and whom trusted him - could have said they would provide whatever money necessary to take Tesla private. There's no proof contrary to that - and if there was proof of this then the SEC could have extracted a shitload more money than $40mm for the losses some short sellers would have had. Or we could just reference an article that doesn't have any proof (even though you're referencing it as proof) and pretend it's proof. So, so far you're not shown Elon has lied at all - and it's probably safe to say Trump lies daily about something - or more safely to say 90% of days he lies.
Sputnik inspired NACA to transition to NASA out of fear.
>And, well, aside from the bias Elon would have where he's developing what will likely become the most successful for-profit space business in history - which I'm sure he's aware of that bias, it definitely is a good idea to be prepared to defend against bad actors who may use space as an attack vector; safety and security is clearly a concern of Elon's especially when it comes to the potential that AI has for devastating humanity.
Elon thinks it's a good idea because he likes subsidies. A "Space Invasion" doesn't make sense. A "Space Army" doesn't make sense. "Coastal Defense" doesn't make sense. ICBM missiles changed the entire meaning of war and defense.
Re: Subsidies - As I said, Elon obviously has a bias, and the government isn't shy of subsidizing many industries and infrastructure. Likewise, if I or you want to use anecdotes as argument points, why not just saw war and fear doesn't make sense - so we shouldn't do anything proactively in the name of defense/protection?
The U.S. even researched (and in some cases developed prototype) weapons for space, not just SDI/Star Wars stuff either.
Stuff out of the Future Weapons Office, some of which can be found in the declassified "The Meanderings of a Weapon Oriented Mind When Applied in a Vacuum Such as on the Moon" like 'a spin stabilized micro gun', 'spin/fin stabilized sausage gun', 'sausage gun #2', 'directed gas weapon for close in fighting', 'spring propelled spherical projectile', 'gas cartidge gun', 'gas operated needle gun'.
The Soviets even sent conventional firearms into space like the triple-barreled TP-82, 2 barrels in 28 gauge and a rifled barrel in 5.45x39mm, although this was more for survival upon re-entry in remote Russia. HOWEVER they did develop a prototype laser pistol in the 80's that used a pyrotechnic flashbulb for disabling optical sensors on spacecraft, basically let a cosmonaut out for an EVA, get within 20 meters of the sensor and fire.