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Comment by low_tech_love | Hacker News Reader

Moving past all the obvious (and mostly accurate) criticism that we can throw at Musk for his high school level prejudice, I can't help but wonder: how can such a smart and experienced person not stop to think for one minute before he Tweets, "hey, maybe I don't really know the whole story here" or "ok, it's not worth it this time"?

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It’s basically a bully kicking someone less powerful for fun (and when you’re one of the richest people in the world almost everyone is less powerful).

It’s only when he realises the victim wasn’t as powerless as he thought and there might actually be some expensive consequences for his actions did he change his tune. Still no proper apology though.

What an idiot.

Regardless of whatever Musk's intrinsic and learned intelligence is, it's quite clear he operates from intuition when tweeting- much like Trump (and many other users of twitter). He's going for the dopamine rush of seeing others praise him for what most people would interpret as jerkish behavior (and in his mind, clearly he believed this employee was "worthless" and "should have been fired" until he learned that the consequence of that would mean a very large payout.

To some extent, I see this pattern emerging in many people on social media (myself included). I tend to put a limit on my social media interactions when I am able to recognize such patterns. I'm uncertain if I will be able to so in the future, but on the other hand, I'm not the CEO of a major social media platform.

See also - Twitter poisoning: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-...

> I'm not the CEO of a major social media platform. Exactly. I mean we're all human and to a certain extent we need the dopamine rush and to feel alive, have some fun, say what we think. But to be him and go out on what's probably the most watched stream of letters in the world, and say "he's the worst" or "he didn't do any work", I mean, come on. There must be at least a tiny little cricket on his shoulder saying "hmm, not worth it". There must be.

> such a smart and experienced person

There's your problem.

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