Note that I'm asking for an actual steelmanned argument for why there's no possible defense of Musk here, not why people have high priors to just assume there's no defense.
I'm not sure that's the case. I think many people, myself included, assumed Musk's course was always "just do what's best for me." So he's really just holding to that.
You should give people in your life the benefit of the doubt, but large corporations and billionaires usually found success by acting in their own interest so they will just keep on doing that.
As far as I can tell Musk is currently self-destructing for no apparent reason -- how is that best for him?
Some of the questionable stuff he's been doing for a while has obvious upsides for him. Lying about the capabilities of your products and market manipulation are both obviously nice if you can get away with it. So is demonstratively skirting laws and regulations. Similarly, building a reputation for going after people who did something that contravened your personal interests, even if doing so was their professional or legal duty, has its benefits. It encourages careful consideration of whether dereliction of duty would not be preferable over getting in your way. All these are demonstrations of strength.
But streisanding elonjet just looks weak and pathetic. As does trying to stiff your suppliers.
If you build up a reputation for being completely unprincipled and erratic, and try to wheedle out of both your word and your legal obligations even in cases when you probably can't get away with it and there is not even a particularly compelling reason to try to do so in the first place; well -- surely that can only hurt your brand and also mean that people who would otherwise have done business with you won't or will now only do so on much less favorable terms? Or am I missing something here?
No apparent reason? He bought one of the biggest influence platforms on the planet and roughly simultaneously began heavily pumping the narratives of the MAGA faction, making throwaway declarations of political neutrality.
There's a pretty apparent motivation—advance a particular faction’s political prospects and be visibly seen as a key agent of their success when they fully come to power, and be rewarded for that.
It may be a high risk gamble that could explode before it pays off (its first big chance would be the 2024 election, though it could yield some benefits sooner) but its not completely without apparent purpose.
The "no apparent reason" was not about the what but the how.
Buying one of the biggest influence platforms on the planet makes complete sense, especially if a) it's currently used to advance political ideologies which you can plausibly regard as a real risk to your other business ventures and b) you are a world-class communicator on the platform and that is one of your strongest assets.
So does eliminating (the hostile and plainly incompetent) top management and the majority of the work force.
But in terms of overall execution quality things look a bit like Putin's Ukraine invasion; I'd wager that the majority of erstwhile enthusiastic supporters of the whole thing would probably politely decline front-line participation at this point.
Musk is currently in a bubble where everyone around him is giving him unlimited "attaboys" for his behavior. He probably doesn't have a great read on how poorly things are going for him.
I mean, if you have to irrationally hate someone, I guess billionaires are going to be the ones with the resources to handle it, but I'd really rather we as a society move away from this sort of cathartic scapegoating altogether. The more we normalize taking our anger out on some group or another, backed up by flimsy excuses like "x usually found success by acting in their own interest" the more likely it becomes that "x" will be "The Jews" or some other group.
That is some wild logic. People are angry for material reasons. It's often misdirected or invalid but there's a cause.
I think anger is valid and useful when it's directed at the root of the cause. And I'm sorry, but billionaires and politicians are the ones with more power than anyone else so if something is materially broken in our world they probably deserve an outsized portion of that anger.
It takes work to misdirect that anger to other groups, which some politicians and media groups often do. I'd argue that is the thing which should be examined quite carefully.
From what I have seen billionaires tend to get more hate because they simply have more negative impact on peoples lives. Elon kicking out Tesla’s founders is hard to judge objectively because they might have done a worse job, but it’s easy to identify lots of dumb shit he did that harmed the company. Presumably he did plenty of positive things, but the negatives are just easier to identify.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daniel-radcliffe-defends-speaki...
Just like people clearly dislike Bill Cosby because of rape not his status as a former entertainer.
There's a fair share of that as well[0]. But yes, Elon, the worlds richest man (as of earlier this year), draws more ire for his wealth. It's expected since he's about 160x richer than Rowling (she's no longer a billionaire), and uses his money to rig the economy in his favor. He's a more apt symbol of the billionaire class than Rowling.
“As of 2022, J.K. Rowling’s net worth is an estimated £820 million, or around $1.1 billion, per The Sunday Times. According to the site, this makes Rowling the 196th richest person in the U.K. overall.” https://stylecaster.com/jk-rowling-net-worth/
If you look at the top 10 list of richest people Elon is the only one who draws this level of negative attention because he's the only one who is having a huge public meltdown and constantly being in the news for being a garbage human being
The study by YouGov in conjunction with The Economist has found that 30-44-year-olds are most likely to believe this widely debunked conspiracy, with 7% of people from this age group saying that it is "definitely true" and 20% of them saying it is "probably true.
Look, in no way am I saying polls are perfect but almost every metric imaginable says Elon is not the most unpopular billionaire by a long shot. There’s not a huge conspiracy against Musk specifically, people just don’t like power-hungry billionaires.
Nobody cares about Bernard Arnault because he doesn’t really pose an existential threat. High fashion will continue to do the same thing they’ve always done
0 - https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
I don't think it suggests that, or at least I certainly didn't mean to communicate as such. I was responding narrowly to the parent's remarks (explicitly rationalizing targeting billionaires as a group) and not trying to imply anything broader.
Not just billionaires, the specific type of billionaire that seeks out fame.
There are plenty of billionaires with names you'd not recognize.
premise rejected
You seem to be arguing that only billionaires can rationally hate other billionaires, and anyone who is not on that level can't be rational, because they don't understand what's going on with billionaires. If they they did, they too would be billionaires. This might be narrowly correct in pure business terms, but the problem is that you subordinate everything else to the most unusual characteristic. It's like arguing that the controversial political opinions of a successful athlete aren't subject to debate, because critics haven't won any sportsball championships.
I wonder, what could be a rational hate?
Personally I also wonder what is the supposed rationality behind any society granting some becoming billionaires. All the more when there is no social enforcement loop that ensure that the gap between richest and poorest remain in decent state. Otherwise the hate of the richest is an obvious outcome of the inequity structure.
Personally, I'm pretty much an "anti-hate" absolutist, but I recognize that a lot of people in this audience aren't, so I'm leaving room for "rational hate" which is maybe something like "this person did something bad, so I hate them" versus "this person belongs to a group, and some people in that group have done bad things, ergo I hate this person" which is the explicit reasoning in the comment that I originally replied to.
> Personally I also wonder what is the supposed rationality behind any society granting some becoming billionaires. All the more when there is no social enforcement loop that ensure that the gap between richest and poorest remain in decent state.
Yeah, I empathize with this.
> Otherwise the hate of the richest is an obvious outcome of the inequity structure.
It may be "an obvious outcome", but it doesn't mean it's rational. It's certainly not a moral outcome.
There are two different point here:
- describing the flow events leading to hate generation
- pretending that that hate can be defined has a rational thing
The former seems completely legitimate to me. The latter seems to me to result only from confusion. Hate is an emotion, which to my mind means that is not rationally grounded. Not everything need to be rationally grounded to be considered legitimate. Rationality itself is not rationally grounded obviously.
> It may be "an obvious outcome", but it doesn't mean it's rational. It's certainly not a moral outcome.
Sure, rationality doesn’t come with moral integrity hardly bounded. I think "rational" is a bit polysemous here, as it is might be heard as "ethically sound", and not purely "logically sound".
Step 1 - learn that there are more than two sides to the world. Even in 2D thinking of the flat earth. We live in 3D
I personally think that the narrative you are interrogating is weak, even a straw man version of the people you think you're arguing with. It seems clear to me that Elon has long operated on personal grievance with respect to Twitter, and that "free speech" is just the veneer he puts on because it works.
Yes, that's what steelmanning is. If you don't care to do it, you're free not to respond to a request for a steelmanned arugment. Explaining your principled refusal to steelman doesn't add much to the discussion.
I'm not saying this applies to the ElonJet case, but I can see why the question would be asked.
As an example, take a look at this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33984555
There I basically say that Elon has flipped on a few things, this user has pretended to not be aware of any instance of this (!) and asked for any examples, someone raises a couple and their responses to that is fairly typical of a fanboi. Tbh I should just close the tab and go walk my dog, but it's a pretty interesting discussion and it's -3C outside so I'm sorta procrastinating :)
Frankly, as some one who engages in similar lines of questioning as the top level, I think you have to bring your own findings to the table. You aren’t arguing in good faith otherwise.
Mea culpa!
Or, alternatively, I've waded into a decidedly anti-Musk crowd and my comments simply look pro-Musk in comparison.
>There I basically say that Elon has flipped on a few things, this user has pretended to not be aware of any instance of this
I said that I'm not aware of any examples of Musk reversing course without any plausible justification, and people in reply bombarded me with examples that in my view had plausible justifications, and when I raised this then I was treated as a "fanboi"... of course.
But hey, after some back and forth I think maybe there are some good examples and I can revise my priors! For example, if Musk specifically said that he would not examine Twitter's internals and then changed his mind, that would be a good example of what I'm looking for. Or if Musk said that he would've fire a bunch of people right before he did, that would be another good example. However, I'm not sure if the people who are claiming that Musk did these things are reliable and more sources would be appreciated.
I see that a lot of people gave rude or nonsense answers which is frustrating, but at the point where you are getting examples and coherent responses I think it’s important to take some responsibility and try to support their argument yourself. I typically find one of two outcomes 1) I find compelling information that causes me to change my mind 2) the best argument I can form is weak or nonsense, but at least others can see I’m invested in the conversation and that a detailed reply won’t go to waste.
I don't disagree. I also do not feel that people are required to reply to me if it's not worth the trouble. I'd rather get no replies than bad replies. Unfortunately I didn't find it easy to google something like "Musk said he wouldn't fire people", so I have to try to infer what sort of actual evidence people are using to support this claim (I can see that Musk denied having the specific intent to cut 75% of staff), and yes that can come off as demanding. But the alternative here is that I try to figure out what is underlying whatever bad unsourced claims people are making and... well, my time is valuable too.
Now is the time to provide them.
That lead to a refined claim that Musk said he would not even perform this sort of review and then changed his mind, but without a clear source attached I'm not sure if this is actually what Musk said.
Because the narrative of "Musk changed his mind" that is overwhelmingly popular here implicitly relies on there being no good intervening justification for why Musk would've done this, but afaik this doesn't seem like an incredibly safe assumption.
I mean, I guess you could be asking why someone would care to correct themselves if they have a popular-but-incorrect view on something, and sadly that's not always a bad question.
I'm not saying he is right - he isn't. I just wish people could put their arrogance aside for ONE SECOND, and realize, they would do the same thing.
It's the immature hypocrisy I don't like. That when it was the FBI and DNI having weekly meetings with high level Twitter staff or taking requests from sitting politicians or active campaigns on what political enemies to censor - that was fine because "it's a public company and they could do what they want".
I want emotional and intellectual honesty. It's beyond rare though.
Mental gymnastics gold medalist.
All the worst cheaters say everyone cheats (which apparently is enough justification to supersede their own public marital vows.)
Arguing that people are universally terrible is a huge signal that the person making the argument is terrible. Don't go into professional partnerships with them, I've seen at least 3 people like that whose behavior has devolved into eventual jail time and they've wrecked their companies.
The world has a surprisingly high percentage of amoral assholes who have a vested interest in pretending everyone is as misanthropic and self-centered as they are, but it's still a small minority.
So what? What is wrong with that? We can't even understand our own motives, let alone attempt to decipher others'. Why not let the action speak for itself? If you're a selfish person prioritizing your own PR above others' needs, your actions will ultimately reflect it, and we can judge them on it. Otherwise, kudos for finding and pursuing something that aligns nicely with your own needs as well as the needs of others.
My question here is whether there is actually a rule here and whether that rule will be followed, or was it just done capriciously because Musk didn't like it.
I have my guesses, of course, but I haven't checked if they are true.
But he isn’t.
This has absolutely no meaning and has no parallels to surveillance of private life.
The police would find that useful, but courts haven't always been favorable: https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/court-south-carolinas-...
Since it was an individual not linked to a website, it's an even easier decision for him.
flightradar24 tracks jets. Go ahead and see if you can figure out where Jeff Bezos or Larry Ellison is from flightrader24. You can't unless you know the jet number they happen to be using.
@ElonJet is effectively tracking Elon and broadcasting that, and only that, information to the whole world.
In theory you could track Elon yourself by correlating public info (figuring out which jets he owns and using flightrader24) but it's orders of magnitude more effort and I don't see how "you can figure it out" justify "publish it to the whole world".
Of course I can't. It would be illegal.
Not because of disingenuous "car has a right to privacy" logic but because any judge would conclude that by tracking a car you're tracking the owner of the car and the owner does have a right to privacy.
Similarly, if the name @ElonJet doesn't give out the purpose: the account is tracking Elon by way of tracking his jet.
Morally speaking, the justification for transparency of jet location was to track them in order to increase safety of flying.
It wasn't to enable tracking of rich people.
It's legal but it's a loophole.
And somehow Elon hate completely overshadows the fact that the guy running @ElonJet account is an asshole.
I think you'll find that it has far more to do with directly interfering with another person's property without permission. If you publish someone's coordinates by using publicly accessible traffic cameras or (cost considerations aside) flying your own news helicopter around, the arguments become a lot vaguer. It's not clear that there's a legal/constitutional right to privacy in the US, and indeed recent supreme court decisions about abortion seem to reject the notion; jurisprudence in the 1970s saw an implicit right to privacy in certain constitutional provisions, an idea which 'originalists' regard as BS.
But Musk had previously called out specifically this account as one that he would not ban (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456). So, whether or not he has a right to ban it, this represents a reneging on an explicit commitment.
Which is it? Because it seems like "I don't like it" is the new justification for bans and "I agree with it" is the new justification for unblocking accounts.
It's difficult to say what said strategy is or may be but it'd be foolish to assume his decisions haven't been considered and vetted. But yes, intent is not well understood at all.
Is there some context to this account's history regarding the Twitter Terms of Service that would legitimately lead you to think this?
1. @elonjet suddenly started to engage in some extremist/TOS-breaking behaviour
2. Elon Musk changed his mind
Given that #2 has happened a few times already, I think that's a pretty reasonable assumption.
Elon went hard right after TSLA was excluded from ESG Index (which happened under Biden), and Elons net worth is tied into TSLA stock pretty hard. In controlling Twitter, he hopes to essentially sway the public towards a more conservative view in hopes of getting Republicans elected into office, which then will result in economic policies that should drive TSLA stock up.
Just kidding, he will buy Twitter and turn it into the everything app and it will be awesome.
September 2022 vs October 2022
--------
Elon will fire 75% of Twitter October statement.
Elon will not fire most of Twitter (November). Look, stupid media was tricked by Rahul Ligma.
Elon fires 75% of Twitter (December)
Because Elon Musk signed an ironclad contract promising to buy Twitter.
> Also, what was the November statement where Musk said he wouldn't fire most of Twitter? I missed that one.
Look up the Rahul Ligma stuff. He was implying that all the media got it wrong and he wasn't going to fire Twitter employees. To Turns out the media was right. Musk was planning to fire them the whole time and Musk was just doing his usual distraction shenanigans.
Right, but I hope you can see how "a court prevented him from changing his mind about the acquisition" is different than "he changed his mind again and decided to buy Twitter after all".
> Look up the Rahul Ligma stuff.
I did a bit of Googling, but I don't see what you're alluding to (there's a lot of coverage of Twitter drama involving Ligma, apparently). :/
I'm not asking for examples of Musk being wrong about something and correcting himself. I think it's commonly assumed that Musk discovered that this argument would not hold up in court, so he pivoted accordingly.
>Elon will not fire most of Twitter (November). Look, stupid media was tricked by Rahul Ligma.
This is a better example. Could you link a statement to this effect directly?
He literally signed a document in March to buy Twitter, and literally a month later had to be sued to be forced to finish the contract.
How many times does he have to change his mind before you accept this fact?
The number of times he two-faced flip flopped on the Twitter buyout is insane. I've lost count of examples.
Yes, and the intervening event that justifies the narrative flip is that he got increased access to Twitter's internal systems and decided that the company had deeper issues than initially appreciated. Rejecting a purchase where there's a hidden defect is not flip-flopping, the fact that you can't see the obvious weakness of this example is telling.
btw, where's the statement that Elon said that he would not be firing most of Twitter? Again, that seems to be a much better example.... if you can provide it. But maybe you can't?
This does not make Elon look any better. Elon himself chose to eschew due diligence when he signed the first intent to buy. The first intent to buy was incredibly unusual in the first place because he did not ask for any due-diligence.
If I tell you I will buy your car, no questions asked, and then show up and start complaining about the headlights, that is flip-flopping. It's why the whole thing went to court. Do you really think normal M&A doesn't include due-diligence?
Regardless, the "hidden" issues were a scapegoat. It is far more likely that he wanted to backout because the entire tech sector crashed and 44B was now an insane premium (SNAP, which was worth ~30B at the time is now 15B).
Really? He specifically claimed that the offer was truly unconditional, no matter what sort of fraud or criminality might be occurring within Twitter? That seems very unlikely to me.
Yes. This was a huge deal, I don't know how you missed it. It's also why no one believed he could get out of it. That's why he had to tried sue to cancel the deal instead of just, cancelling the deal? It wasn't even clear that if he managed to prove TWTR had misled investors that could cancel the deal.
[1] https://fortune.com/2022/08/23/twitter-elon-musk-whistleblow...
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/judge-calls-elon-musk-legal-...
You are running away from this point. So I'll go focus on this one thank you.
Because you know the Twitter buyout has more waffles and flip flops than you care to defend.
BTW, the contract waived Elons right to research Twitter's books. Suddenly, after signing the contract, he flip flopped on that point too.
And sealioning's just dull, dull, dull.
"All the houses in this picture? They've already got our solar roof tiles fitted!" (they didn't)
"Everything Hyperloop!"
My issue with Musk isn't that he changes his mind based on new evidence, or even oversells promises of the future. It's the fact he's willing to stand in front of a crowd, look people in the eye and _flat_out_lie_ about what state things are in today.
> The people have spoken. > Trump will be reinstated. > Vox Populi, Vox Dei. > 2:53 AM · Nov 20, 2022
I can't think of one, can you?
Because Twitter had rules and they enforced those rules which led to bans/suspensions...and people were upset about that on free speech grounds.
Follow the rules, people.
So, yes a targeted organized attack wouldn't be overly hard a random chaotic attack is easier with this twitter account.
Georgia's Secretary of State and his family received death threats.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/politics/georgia-raffensperge...
Some election workers had to leave their homes because of death threats
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-threats-geor...
But Trump's account was reinstated so I guess only Elon's personal safety matters.
2) I'm simply providing an explanation which Elon Musk has openly been saying, the account was threatening his safety (I made no claim about fairness or anything else)
3) Trump was not doing real-time tracking of specific private individuals and publishing them online
I'm not claiming any banning is justified btw, but I'm providing an insight.
How about this for a better apples to apples comparison? The same guy behind ElonJet also has accounts that track the private jets of Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, Jeff Bezos, and Drake.
There are people out there that literally believe that Bill Gates is trying to depopulate the world through vaccines (going so far as claiming that he was apart of a conspiracy that resulted in COVID). Probably a lot crazies that would do something crazy to him.
And yet this account is not suspended as of right now.
It is now. In fact all of the plane trackers are gone.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the freedom of speech. It is related to breaking the promise (made when joining any company as an employee) not to divulge confidential information. This is a restriction on the freedom of speech that one knowingly agrees to when joining the company.
If I knowingly posted sensitive internal discussions from my employer I would be kicked out. Or worse: if I worked in a hospital and shared some sensitive pictures I might be hit with heavy fines or spend time behind bars. My 2c.
As a random person on the internet why should I have any issues posting some random company's web chats?
What are you, a free thinker? Why not just joint he "Elon man bad" chorus?
I'm reminded of a quote from a journalist
"Elon Musk fans were bullied in high school, and the bullies were right"
I can say Elon is a shit person because that is my opinion. I am entitled to that opinion as much as you are entitled to simp for him