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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Is Musk bipolar?

No, but he is impulsive, careless, fraudulent and, when it comes to software, incompetent.

I find analysis of this type petty and stupid. It’s like arguing Doyle Brunson was just really lucky.

How much success, across multiple decades in so many different fields of business and technology, must someone acquire before meeting your standards?

I feel like I’m reading comments on Slashdot about Bill Gates in 1999. But in comparison, Elon Musk is wildly more successful than 1999 Bill Gates.

Agreed. Impulsive, careless, fraudulent? Sure that's fine to have opinions and thoughts on, he's a public figure and we have a right to gossip and all. But incompetent? I feel like you need a bit more factual meat to something like that. That's a stretch. You can fail upwards in a lot of crowded fields, especially software startups, but Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink? Give the man some credit.

I said "on technology, incompetent" and I think that is corroborated by Ashlee Vance's authorized (and highly sympathetic) biography

Perhaps a less petty analysis is to ponder why Tesla is yet to issue any stock dividends.

I think maybe it's not worth much trying to stereotype people into mental diseases to blame for behaviors, until we'd identify the causes and properly characterize those classes. By the way, from what I learn on the Internet, I'd agree with the other comment that he's a jackass.

Personality disorders are not stereotypes. Symptoms are not blamed on the disease; they reveal it. Would you also say, "let's not stereotype someone as disabled by speculating on whether their leg is broken just because we can see them limping and their bone sticking out?" If the symptoms are visible, by all means, let's help the mentally ill by being honest.

"Jackass" is slang for a foolish or stupid person, and as Musk has degrees in Physics and Economics from Penn, I don't think that remotely fits, unless GP was being kind. "Jackass" is also a synonym for "asshole," which is a colloquial term for narcissist.

Related, he talked about being diagnosed with Asperger's before

https://www.axios.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-aspergers-syndrom...

No, just a jackass.

Edit: Yes, firing 3000 people with lives and families because you paid an obscene amount of money for a company that you didn’t actually want makes you a jackass.

> Yes, firing 3000 people with lives and families

Maybe we need to be more mature.

Twitter was very clearly bloated. Laying off the bloat is pretty much status quo for major acquisitions. There is nothing unusual here.

Are any of the other major tech companies laying off huge percentages of their workforce also "jackasses"???

It’s not “very clear” to this outsider that Twitter was bloated, not that the firings adhere to any particular “debloating” rationale.

Edit: The approach Musk has taken to layoffs also does not evoke maturity.

It was the Twitter's board that forced Musk to buy it.

This is completely backwards. Did Twitter’s board make him make an offer? I don’t go around making multi-billion dollar offers for things I don’t actually want.

Twitter's board would have been sued to hell and back if they hadn't made him live up to his contract. They would have been left personally penniless.

Meanwhile, Musk initiated every stage of the acquisition and dictated the terms.

Then it is that omnipotent Mr. Shareholder that could sue the board is the villain here: he knew what Musk was going to do, he knew that Musk wanted to back out, yet he chose to press the board.

Type II NPD. Musk has covert narcissism. His recent passive-aggressive posts regarding Starlink and Ukraine, plus blaming activists for advertisers leaving Twitter, gives it away. Passive-aggressiveness and blaming are particularly common to Type II. Seeing those, we wouldn't need to look too hard for other Type II NPD symptoms, such public generosity along with being cruel in private, being intolerant of or oversensitive to criticism, smugness, self-absorbtion, self-criticsm, shyness, perfectionism, holding grudges, and all types have strong denial and low empathy. Though if Musk often engages in humiliating others, I have it wrong; that's Type III, toxic. Usually successful individuals will get NPD buttoned up along with becoming fit even though denial is very difficult to overcome.

What would make you think he was bipolar? There are other symptoms, but BPD requires depressions and manias.

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