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Comment by jeffreyrogers | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk is sort-of the Howard Hughes of the 21st century: erratic, prone to outlandish behavior and exaggeration, but also delivering technology that no one else is able to. It's no surprise the military is interested. I assume they always have been.

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Is he any more erratic and outlandish then anyone else? Or is it simply his life is under a microscope, and every mistake gets amplified by a media hungry for clicks and willing to exaggerate or embellish itself?

Yes, he is, at least as he publicly presents himself. There are so many examples to choose from it is hard to pick one. I'm sure some of it is deliberate to cultivate a certain image, but it's not like Satya Nadella is going on Joe Rogan's podcast and smoking weed or tweeting while on acid and the media just chooses to ignore it.

Could you link to some of those "on acid" tweets?

Well there is the one where he decided to call a guy saving kids lives a pedophile just because he said they weren't going to use the submarine Musk had his team build, back during thailand's crisis.

That's not a very sane reaction to have.

Most execs are PR/investor relations manufactured corporate clones.

They all have their own flaws, Elon just doesn’t give a shit about wearing his on his sleeve

Smoking weed and having a conversation while being a billionaire is "erratic and outlandish" why?

Because billionaires don't do that publicly? I don't care what Elon Musk does or how he acts. It doesn't affect me at all, but it's obvious that his behavior is unlike nearly any other high profile CEO.

As a thought experiment: find another CEO who has done an interview while high. It is extremely uncommon. Again, I have nothing against it personally, but there are norms that most CEOs follow and that Elon disregards.

>Again, I have nothing against it personally, but there are norms that most CEOs follow and that Elon disregards.

Most CEOs are effectively as easy to replace as the cleaning stuff wiping their desk is. Elon Musk however? He made a cult out of himself, even more so than Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates ever did. This level of cult building can be dangerous (e.g. the Bitcoin price hike/crash or his multiple incidents with the SEC), but also highly effective to raise money and to keep the mechanisms of the stock market at bay - Amazon for example is famous for not paying dividends, no matter the pressure.

> Most CEOs are effectively as easy to replace as the cleaning stuff wiping their desk is.

I feel like if this were true, boards of directors would be paying them the same as regular employees and not 320x as much, as is the current standard[1].

[1] https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-surged-14-i...

CEO pay is a racket anyway, especially given that even colossal fuck-ups usually end up in a nice golden parachute.

Competent Elites

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CKpByWmsZ8WmpHtYa/competent-...

It's a federal crime and grounds for stripping ones security clearance... unless you're a VIP who can get special treatment.

I was going to point that out. I feel this is way exaggerated.

Name a second one who did it in front of 10M people.

Possibly related: Marc Andreessen is referred to as "the world's most successful individual who has not done LSD with both Grimes and Azealia Banks."

https://niccolo.substack.com/p/the-dubrovnik-interviews-marc...

Yes, more erratic and outlandish than most. Owning a company that produces starships ticks the outlandish box all on its own. Inexplicable tweets that draw draw the ire of the SEC and the flip flop on Bitcoin tick the erratic box.

Is that a joke? He named his son X Æ A-12

I like Elon. What inspiration does, say, Sundar Pichai bring to the world? Do kids look at Tim Cook in awe?

Elon is unique, eccentric and wild. I bet if Feynman was around today on Twitter, he would have been cancelled many-a-times.

People who love/hate him with passion - why? Why are you spending so much personal energy for activism? Has Elon affected your life in a profound way? Why are so invested?

Some people blindly love him like the second coming of Jesus. Some think he is the worst of what the world has to offer. I blame Twitter and social media for this. Populism is a shitty trope. We are also destroying the society for conformism - I personally want the world to be full of wild eccentric people that don’t have the microphone of Twitter to start forming factions. I know so many weirdos in life that definitely have something to offer to the society, despite of their illfitting personalities. Stop cancelling them.

Imagine Elon existed in 1970’s without the internet and Twitter. There would be no activism unless you get together in person. There would be no vile unsubstantiated hatred. He wouldn’t have the social media amplifiers and the public would be mostly interested in the outcomes of their achievements. Everything would be peaceful.

> People who love/hate him with passion

I think one aspect you're missing is that this is precisely what Musk wants and needs, and has cultivated.

You're pointing out the trappings of celebrity. The passions are all skin deep - similar to the loves and hates you find in the public for celebrities of the normal sort. The people who love him don't really love him and the people who hate him don't really hate him. They will forget about him when they find new symbols as avatars for their ideological perspectives.

Musk cultivates an air of celebrity. It does seem like he has a certain cloying need for attention, and becomes uncontrollably angry when he feels dismissed or not listened to (e.g. the "pedo guy" incident). He actively engages/toys with communities that are characterized by a severe forms of hero worship (the coin communities, the trading communities, etc). It's clear that he has a deep-seated need to receive some sort of broad public approval. "Quirky CEO" seems to be the persona he has adopted to help him fulfill these needs.

I think it's ironic that you are lamenting the frothy public discourse around this individual without realizing that both the love and hate he receives are very much desired by him and actively pursue by him. The idea that a whole lot of people are having very long, passionate arguments about you while you can sit back in your insulated domain and once in a while fan the flames, is very appealing to a certain type of personality.

Very good points. I didn't want to ignore his lust for attention and inappropriate things, that's the collateral damage. I strongly believe that the value he has created far offsets the negative social media attention whoring. It is not even close. He has changed space industry and car industry forever. Complaining about his social media extravaganza is so profoundly unbalanced and misplaced. History is going to remember his achievements, not social media presence.

I can still lament on his public discourge whether he actively desires it or not - it is still despicable and toxic, for both sides. Look at it this way - cut up Elon's personality into various eccentric pieces. Engineering, leadership, inspiring people and rallying support - should be looked up to and not "cancelled" just because you want to criticize him for crypto meming, social media presence and his erratic behavior on Twitter. Both can take place with calm, civil discourse.

Not only does it show deep lack of judgement of people - it has chilling effects for societal conformation. This is a surefire way to go towards a dystopian society where cancel culture prevails and social media driven activism takes over like a steam roller crushing people for their minor misconducts.

I never understood the contempt towards him and his companies.

Maybe it's rooted from envy? Some argue that it tends to go hand-in-hand with vitriol:

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-19419-002

The best part about Elon is the story in the new Eric Berger SpaceX book.

Gwen had just started at SpaceX and spend a while coming up with a big plan for what she was going to do there - how she would sell rockets, etc. etc.

In response to this plan, Elon said "I don't want you to spend time making plans about doing stuff. Just do stuff."

Obviously there is a time and a place for planning, but after working at a monster Telco that is utterly consumed by archaic process and plans and documents, I would kill to work for a boss that prioritized doing stuff over planning doing stuff.

systems engineering is pain in the ass but it exists for a reason, its proven to reduce development costs and surprise issues.

There are similarities and differences enough similarities that I wonder if Starship or some other project is just a new Glomar Explorer for the current day's Project Azorian.

GSF Explorer, formerly USNS Hughes Glomar Explorer (T-AG-193), was a deep-sea drillship platform built for Project Azorian, the secret 1974 effort by the United States Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division to recover the Soviet submarine K-129.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer

Not enough Hollywood involvement. I rather think of him as a 21st century Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

(Or maybe the world is simply bound to host one of them per century)

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