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Comment by mwidell | Hacker News Reader

Most people would probably agree that Musk made some very bad and rookie-looking decisions since acquiring Twitter. Also he has said a lot of very controversial things in the last 1-2 years.

Before that he arguably was a lot more well respected as an entrepreneur - keeping a lower profile and building a couple of extremely successful businesses in parallel.

My big question that I’m still searching for an answer to: Did he drastically change as a person in the last couple of years? Or was he just “lucky” to build SpaceX and Tesla into tremendous successes? Or is he still a genius and all of us simply can’t see how he’s making Twitter into the next big success in his CV?

If he did change as a person - why? What happened? Bad breakup? Drug abuse? Depression? Too much self confidence? Too much stress for too long? Something else?

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It's been clear for a while that Musk has had these sorts of issues. There's the infamous pedo guy incident stemming from Musk's unwanted attempts to help in the Thai cave rescue. Before then, there were quite a few reports during the early ramp up for Tesla Model 3 about several of Musk's bad ideas re car production. There were also several reports that SpaceX was only as successful as it was because it had a COO who could insulate the company from Musk's antics.

So it's been clear for at least a half dozen years or so that a successful Musk company needs a team to manage Musk and keep him from unnecessary interference in the company, but it may have required paying more attention to what he did. What changed when he bought Twitter is that he is now articulating a vision that is far less comfortable for many people ("stop banning fascists" is rather less inspiring than "I want to live on Mars"), and also, many of the failures of his micromanagement are far more visible to the general public on a large social media platform than a low-volume rocket or (at the time) auto manufacturer.

There is no change you should be looking for. This is who he is, and it doesn't take a lot of digging to see it. You, like most of us, just weren't looking closely at what he was doing before the last couple years.

It's akin to Rudy Giuliani [1]. Musk was always this way but it wasn't the fore-front when everybody was enthusiastic about electric cars.

It's similar to the quote "If Jeffrey Dahmer ran a 4.3, we'd call it an 'eating disorder.'".

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=mXQuto1fMp4

Go read about the first X.com/PayPal debacle.

This is not the first time he's done this... stuck his fingers in, shouted at people, pushed his weight around, and Dunning-Kruger'd something to the point of failure. In that case, the board turfed him, and Peter Thiel fixed the problem.

He's grinding on an old (20+ years) obsession, down to the name of the 'product'.

As I said about this yesterday, Musk's success was a product of the economic situation from 2008->2022, when interest rates were insanely low, QE/stimulus was going crazy, Silicon Valley profits sky high and endlessly growing, and investors were willing to throw money at stuff like this.

With rates higher, investors will have other places to put their money, debt is more expensive, and people like Musk will find themselves standing naked on the beach as the tide goes out.

I think he’s upset that he was forced to buy the company and is actively running it into the ground.

blatantly wrong

It’s not like the very first thing Musk did was dismantle the verification system… even a tiered verification system would have made it less blatant that Musk is destroying Twitter.

Word on the street is that Grimes got him into some serious drugs that has amplified his behavior.

As Rain Falls said in RDR2: "People don't change, they just become more of who they really are."

I will argue with your statement that “he was respected as an entrepreneur.” It is arguable, and this weasel word forms the basis for your subsequent argument. It’s wrong. The question is “respected by whom.” I do not believe that anyone who respected him for entrepreneurship beforehand now disrespects him as an entrepreneur.

I do believe that people who marginally understood his work but have vested interests in the existing structure, including “news” orgs, reporters, political hacks, and direct competitors, have tried to create controversy and confusion around Musk.

Of course this would be expected to happen, and those gossipers and murmurers who can be influential will be among the uninformed.

> I do not believe that anyone who respected him for entrepreneurship beforehand now disrespects him as an entrepreneur.

You can count me in that bucket. I didn't like some of what I heard from Tesla, mostly about the working hours. But I genuinely believe he was driven by a desire to do Hard Stuff that traditional organizations refused to do, and inspired a lot of smart people to come along and try to make stuff happen.

Now I'm convinced he's just a drug addict, or the drugs have done enough damage to his brain over time that it's noticeable now.

I fail to understand how these could have been the results of vested interests from existing structures, and not Musk's questionable behavior:

- insulting a kid saving cave-diver a pedo;

- getting into a buying agreement with Twitter's shareholders, as a "joke";

- repeatedly asserting that FSD is a solved problem, and will be production ready in 6 months, for 6 years;

- repeatedly claiming to be free speech, but continuously enforcing politically backed censorship over Twitter;

- refusing to pay Twitter' suppliers.

One must recognize that virtually every human action can be hyperbolically represented. That hyperbole will resonant with some people on its surface. Others, from a perspective of experience, knowledge, priorities: they will add a tolerance. Some will add a lot. Personally, none of what you’ve mentioned even causes me to pause. This is massively subject to information bias and philosophy. Some things are “ho-hum,” others are not.

But the approach of “I will speak for all of us and take the liberty of summarizing and manufacturing a consensus” is too far. I object. I bet the needle has barely moved, and if it has that’s largely because the media is flooding the zone on normies who never really cared anyway.

Normal people: "Musk, please stop all this weird twitter stuff about calling cave divers pedos and wasting resources on makeshift submarines. We really like the vision behind Tesla and SpaceX and want our cool scifi CEO back!"

Musk Fanboys: "One must recognize that virtually every human action [...]"

If your normal is buzzfeed, boingboing, CNN, and Reddit politics, and false emerald mine innuendo, just accept that you’ve given up in life.

I feel like you could probably do a better baseless ad hominem than "you probably watch the news and goto websites".

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