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Comment by benlumen | Hacker News Reader

This is fascinating and exciting to me, to be honest. Like a lot of people around here I'm sure, I've spent a lot of time thinking about Twitter's influence on our society and I can't say it's positive. The degree to which politicians all now depend on it unquestioningly bothers me a lot. The way our adversaries use it to subvert us is worrying. What it does to people's health isn't good.

Musk is the one billionaire that I honestly believe thinks of humanity's best interests in the big picture, long term. He's clearly identified Twitter and social media in general as a challenge to be wrestled with. Just really glad about it tbh.

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> Musk is the one billionaire that I honestly believe thinks of humanity's best interests in the big picture, long term.

I could believe that he thinks he's that billionaire. However, his competence leaves something to be desired. Just yesterday, he had a peace proposal for the current Russo-Ukrainian war that boils down to "give Russia everything it wants" on the basis that that's what the eventual peace is going to be, the fact that the Russian military and milblogger sphere is in full-blown panic over Ukrainian successes in Lyman and near Kherson. Or take this case, where Musk and his attorneys have completely shot their credibility with the judge--in a case where there will be no jury, only the judge ruling on the merits.

In short, Musk does seem to have the tech-bro attitude of "I always know what the right answer is, and everyone who tries to tell me otherwise is an idiot." That is not the kind of person I want working towards humanity's best interests.

> give Russia everything it wants

You're drastically underestimating how much Russia wants. Musks idea would probably only give them Crimea, not the other four provinces.

Also, someone incompetently trying to work in humanities best interest is still way better than most billionaires.

> However, his competence leaves something to be desired.

Elon: The richest and most successful business person in the history of humanity

Hacker news: he's not competent

>Implying that money is a good metric for the competence of a person.

Why don't we go a step further and say that poor people deserve to be poor because they're incompetent?

>in the history of humanity [citation needed]

Being poor doesn't imply incompetence.

Growing your wealth more than a hundred fold in 10 years implies competence.

Elon: The richest and most successful business person in the history of humanity

Rockefeller probably still has him bet, never mind historical figures such as Mansa Munsa or Augustus Caesar (though in rather different contexts).

Personally, I wouldn't frame things in terms of competence, but trustworthiness. However, his disdain for public transport does seem rather myopic...

In terms of what you can buy with your money, Elon has them all beat. Any reasonable person would take Elon money in 2022 versus Rockefeller money in early 1900s. And Rockefeller's net worth was around 3% of US GDP, which is around $600 billion today - an amount that Elon will almost assuredly pass in his lifetime.

I also weight "success" with how much is inherited. Elon obviously inherited a ton, but Augustus literally inherited the most powerful state on the planet.

One of Elon's most visible projects (Hyperloop) is literally public transit.

One of Elon's most visible projects (Hyperloop) is literally public transit.

Elon does not actively work on the Hyperloop, and critics have argued it may even be a red herring that he put out there deliberately to distract from more realistic and well-proven high speed rail technology. What Elon (or at least the Boring Company) did work on, though, is the 'Vegas Loop', a sad joke of a project.

What about this whole fiasco doesn't leave you questioning Musk's mental faculties?

He looks like a toddler throwing a fit. That doesn't sound like someone who has humanities best interests at heart.

So the new narratibe, after all of Musks attics, is now of the billionaire pursuing humanities best that, human as we all are, had to be nudged to do that as well by honoring his acquisition of Twitter. I already how Musk would get out of it with his hero status intact, I guess I just got my answer, or at least a potential one.

What are you talking about, "new narrative"? We're not all narrative-driven bots, you know. I've been reading about Elon Musk since before anyone else I knew had even heard of him and have always admired his endeavours.

>The way our adversaries use it to subvert us is worrying.

Musk was basically repeating Kremlin propaganda a day ago on Twitter itself. If we're going to hand a platform to unaccountable billionaires maybe not to the one who is mentally unstable, is heavily invested in and praises autocratic adversaries for their working conditions and randomly accuses people of pedophilia.

Musk himself is probably the most prominent mental health victim of that site and if anything he should have logged out of his account instead of buying the thing

> Musk is the one billionaire that I honestly believe thinks of humanity's best interests in the big picture, long term.

I find that hard to believe now.

It's always been hard to believe. Just look at the work Bill Gates does on global health!

It you mean is that he will destroy Twitter, then I probably agree. Otherwise, the way he fools around social networks will not do anything good for humanity.

I agree that Twitter is awful, and I agree that there's no better man to absolutely drive it into the ground and pound it into irrelevance and bankruptcy than Elon Musk.

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