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Comment by fasteddie31003 | Hacker News Reader

Change my mind. Elon Musk is the greatest man alive today.

Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. They're repetitive and usually turn nasty.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm a huge, long time fan of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, and I've found inspiration in some of the things that Elon Musk has shared over the years.

> greatest man alive today

I don't think that's a characterization that can be sustained or not with any level of objectivity.

What I am sure of is that for various reasons, good and bad, Elon Musk is a very polarizing figure, and his missions are best served by studiously avoiding anything akin to lionization or hero worship.

>> greatest man alive today

> I don't think that's a characterization that can be sustained or not with any level of objectivity.

Ok, but thermodynamically speaking, would you agree that he is the coolest human being to ever live?

> thermodynamically speaking

I don't think I've ever seen that phrase before, and I don't know what it means. (:

> coolest human being to ever live

I tend to reflexively reject superlatives for various reasons. I'm comfortable saying that some of the stuff Musk is working on has enormous potential for positive outcomes, and I'd have a hard time coming up with a single person in recent history that had unambiguously produced more possible positive impact.

There are a lot of individuals in recent history who have produced enormous positive outcomes, though typically without as much 'flare' as Musk.

While tongue in cheek, I do entertain this idea sometimes.

What I meant was, if one could quantify the minimizing of the output of CO2 by greatly accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles, and largely credit that to Musk, would that make him the “coolest?”

Why would I? The pain and sacrifice he went through to get where he is right now is just crazy....sacrificing the multimillionaire lifestyle is not easy.

I loved Lex's interview with Jason, he was talking about it as well.

yes i'm sure the richest person in the world is really suffering. get outta here

You know if you think his life was so easy, I have an idea for you to have an even easier life: build a car company that's 10x better and more valuable then Tesla, and a space company that's 10x better than SpaceX. You'll have the easiest life in the world :)

I don’t understand this view. Do you think that the moment you become wealthy then you’re not entitled to feel any type of suffering in life?

It's just a little a lot tone deaf to talk about Musk's 'sacrifices' when so much of the US and the world is going through acute material crises. Sure you can still suffer when you're wealthy. But also dude could just up and go to the bahamas for the rest of his life no problem. Most of us don't have that choice.

My only potential line of argument is that he might be an alien.

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