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Comment by ardy42 | Hacker News Reader

> You must also take into account the history of intentional civil disobedience where the government has over reached and the population simply reaches the point where it refuses to comply.

> Prohibition is obviously a prime example of this, but if you consider various laws that once existed or are currently on the books but no longer enforced (think laws pertaining to racial segregation, sexuality, drug use, and such) you realize that...

The thing is: public safety laws aren't like racial segregation at all. If they are, I look forward to stuff like "civil disobedience" against child labor laws, etc.

> ...being a law abiding citizen does not mean you are no longer allowed to think for yourself.

That's true, but it also means being accountable and not acting without regards to others. Musk is acting like a petulant brat here, and I hope the Alameda County sheriff talks some sense into him.

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Between the twitter rants, the poverty vow, the new child, the name of the new child, and now this, well.. All in the last 10 days or so too. The last few years have not been all that kind either.

I mean, new fathers, even after the other six babies, still do pretty goofy things. However, it's more putting the milk in the pantry type stuff, or mixing up coffee grounds and water.

Not daring public officials to arrest you during a pandemic and all but demanding employees to work during said pandemic.

I feel for the guy, things are tough now. I hope he finds the peace that he seems to need.

Trying to pass off CPAP machines as ventilators, promising that there will be no cases in middle April, and promoting conspiracy theories that the number of deaths have been inflated, when they are almost certainly understated. Yeah, Musk is definitely the guy I wanna be taking advice from in this crisis.

And that’s before we even get to promising to send a submarine to save some trapped kids, and when the person who actually helped save them instead of the mythical submarine says it wouldn’t work calling him a paedophile.

It turned out that ventilators kill coronavirus patients at a much higher rate than CPAP machines.

Cpaps are way more useful as ventilators. If yo are on the vent with covid19 you are as good as done. The problem is one of supply chains.. They are withering and dieing atm. If you don't keep them alive at all cost, the ecosystem around your company is gone once you reopen.

Its even worser In Europe due to car complexity..

Most of that is misleading.

I reccommend people google these events rather than take thawaway1837's post at face value.

I thought all of that is pretty accurate summary without much bias. Which statement is misleading?

More or less all of it.

For example, Elon asked hospitals what they needed and plenty did want CPAP machines (which are a type of ventilator). A much smaller number of invasive ventilators were provisioned (more expensive and probably harder to acquire) as well.

That there are data collection issues that mean COVID19 deaths are inflated (or undercounted! There are factors pushing it both ways) is not a conspiracy theory, it is frequently discussed in mainstream media like the BBC.

For the cave thing, Musk did in fact send people and had them make some prototype mini submarines to help rescue the kids. It wasn't a bad idea (or so the diver who actually found the kids claimed), just not the one they actually went with in the end. The guy he got into a spat with was a British diver living in Thailand who helped recruiting the British divers who actually did the work. Musk won the resulting defamation lawsuit.

Basically all of the statements in the grandparent post omit any facts that get in the way of Musk looking bad.

For the ventilator thing, I agree it was blown out of proportion. I think Elon using the term "ventilator" may have been misleading, but it's also not necessarily wrong, and he did actually deliver the machines to the hospitals.

> That there are data collection issues that mean COVID19 deaths are inflated (or undercounted! There are factors pushing it both ways) is not a conspiracy theory, it is frequently discussed in mainstream media like the BBC.

I have not seen anything remotely suggesting we're over-counting, and honestly the idea is silly. You can't just explain away the number of excess deaths we had in April.

> For the cave thing, Musk did in fact send people and had them make some prototype mini submarines to help rescue the kids. It wasn't a bad idea (or so the diver who actually found the kids claimed), just not the one they actually went with in the end. The guy he got into a spat with was a British diver living in Thailand who helped recruiting the British divers who actually did the work. Musk won the resulting defamation lawsuit.

Yeah but... He still called him a pedophile did he not? Just because he didn't win a defamation suit for a variety of reasons doesn't suddenly make it ok.

My point was about the poster I replied to omitted any facts that got in the way of Musk looking bad. I'm not going to say Musk calling a non-pedophile a pedophile was good (though it was sorta a tit for tat situation, with the guy saying Musk was only trying to rescue the boys for PR so Musk says the retired diver was only trying to rescue the boys to diddle them).

Regarding COVID 19, the BBC has been repeatedly telling me that most countries are counting deaths with COVID19 as COVID 19 deaths (resulting in an overcount) and has been telling me that the response to the virus itself is likely causing many deaths due to things like people being more reluctant to go to hospital, higher depression due to isolation/general climate of fear, no in person access to GPs and similar issues.

> I feel for the guy, things are tough now. I hope he finds the peace that he seems to need.

On a Human level, I would agree.

Selfishly and pragmatically, I hope he never does; who else has done so much to enable the progress that is needed in the World right now? People like him are a once in a generation, not because he's a Genius (which I think he is) but because of the amount of risk he is willing to absorb and keeping going at all costs and motivating more and more to the cause in the process.

I think Dr. Zubrin said it best: he's not motivated by Money, he's after Legacy and that draws the best efforts of Humanity forward in order to be a part of it. He is an archetype character out several Sci-fi books.

6 Kids is a good shot at Legacy on it's own, but perhaps setting the bar this high for them in his Lifetime and the opportunity to out-do each other after setting the bar so high was the goal.

Motivated by legacy is also the archetype of several villains. It's not a good or bad quality per se but the actions taken on the pursuit of it make it good or bad.

And Howard Hughes was also motivated by legacy and unquestionably brilliant. Intellectual brilliance and drive can coexist with psychological vulnerabilities and erratic decision making.

> And Howard Hughes was also motivated by legacy and unquestionably brilliant. Intellectual brilliance and drive can coexist with psychological vulnerabilities and erratic decision making.

Id include Nikola Tesla in there as well, just because something doesn't end in a happy contrite Disney-like ending doesn't mean that it wasn't a positive, or a Life well lived that would carry on and inspire so many more to contribute to that end long after either have died.

I personally moved to CO in large part because of Nikola Tesla, and was resolved to do so before Amendment 64 was even a real possibility.

> However, it's more putting the milk in the pantry type stuff

That's an Americanism, right? Your milk isn't shelf-stable?

Most US milk isn’t ultra-pastuerized. The taste is very different, especially if you go for the really fresh, non-homogenized stuff.

It's the same in Europe too (or at least the parts of Europe that I'm familiar with); you can buy shelf-stable milk, but I don't know anyone that does.

It's the reverse in my part of Europe (Poland) - you can buy non-UHT milk, but I don't know anyone that does.

Same in Italy, but it is the reverse in the UK.

It’s literally the only thing available in a lot of Europe - and it’s handy. Means I can buy a dozen litres at once, stick them in the pantry, and only keep one bottle in the fridge.

Some of them literally taste like arse (think they’re packaged with some funky protective atmosphere), others taste like fresh milk.

In California, even shelves aren't shelf-stable. (Earthquake country)

> That's an Americanism, right? Your milk isn't shelf-stable?

No milk, I'm fairly certain, is shelf-stable once opened; shelf-stable (until opened) milk is widely available but not as popular as milk that isn't in the US, and the “milk in the pantry” reference is implicitly in the context of having just poured from it, so it has been opened. So, while it probably doesn't reference shelf-stable milk, it wouldn't be any different if it did.

I didn't know that the reference implies opened milk; I just imagined a dad like myself sorting groceries after the weekly shopping run, and deciding which go to the fridge, and which to the pantry.

It's not an Americanism to keep your milk in the fridge after you open it. Which country are you from where you'd keep opened milk in the room temp pantry (which is what is being discussed here)?

These attempts at "Americans do the darnedest things XD" comments always seem so forced to me.

Really - do we have to immediately "think of the children!" ?

How about "we need to monitor all your communications, for public safety reasons. And also in order to prevent children pornography, I guess". Would this also be a public safety law, and would any form of civil disobedience be unwarranted?

What makes Musk's gesture a form of "civil disobedience" rather than dumb disrespect of law is that he actually has reasonable arguments why it'd be safe in his case. It's not "I don't believe COVID-19 exists and I've screened the factory against 5G anyway". It may be more beneficial to start defining reasonable standards for reopening. rather than semi-arbitrarily declaring X or Y "essential" with no safety standards in place.

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