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Comment by the_optimist | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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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