Regardless, I standby my remark.

Ultimately in a democracy, everyone is entitled to their opinion. There are lots of people who think the way Elon does, but most of them aren't as prominent about it as Elon is. Seems to me that in a healthy democracy, we shouldn't be particularly upset if an opinion that's common among the general population also has some representation among the elites. https://today.yougov.com/topics/economy/explore/public_figur...

Indeed, if this weren't the case, and elites had wildly different opinions than common people (and also more influence), you could make the case that we were living in a plutocracy or an oligarchy, not a democracy. So Elon's willingness to say aloud what many common people think privately is pushing us away from that plutocracy/oligarchy failure mode.

I think Elon has made major mistakes -- funding of OpenAI being the biggest, from the point of view of humanity's survival. But the hate he gets rarely seems well-justified or rational. Here's my theory for what's going on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38046411

I will not admire anyone who’s interests are looked after, compensated, subsidized, and payed for by our politicians. They are nothing but bastards, they deserve no praise for having been put in their place of privilege by circumstance and conspiracy.

But I'm pretty sure the Afro-American population would gladly swap 50% of black NBA players to have 50% of them in the middle-class.

I'm going to walk through the logic of the people I've met in the south (not necessarily my own opinions).

The south was under military occupation for years after the civil war. The north sent teachers from the north to "re-educate" the south. Many of the farms were destroyed and unmaintainable due to the war, deaths, famines, and removal of slaves. Many southerners were not allowed to hold office until there was a pardon issued.

They almost had a second civil war in 1877 due to a disputed election - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877

Part of the compromise on the 1877 disputed election was that they removed "reconstruction".

In many ways, the south felt a genocide was committed. Their culture, society, wealth, etc was taken from them. We can argue it was justice due to them holding slaves or rebelling, but they left the union peacefully in their minds and wanted to be left alone.

Fast forward to today -- the US government has consistently regulated every primary export of the south (intentionally or otherwise). Cotton, alcohol, tobacco, coal, oil, etc have all been systematically regulated. I've witnessed first hand the large swaths of the south that had their communities destroyed by these regulations (most of them). Further, their state governments constantly derided for the last 150 years.

Opioids and obesity are also much more impactful (imo unrelated to the government) in the south the opioid epidemic (which is still raging) completely decimated the communities. The dispensary rates are also WAY higher in former confederate states than anywhere else.

https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html

When you combine massive regulation, loss of jobs, obesity, etc it's clear why many southerners look to their heritage when they once had pride in their community, state, country, etc.

At the end of the day, the people of the south have slowly seen their culture collapse over the decades and the melting of the statue was kind of the death of it. The burning of their institutions, melting of their statues, and erasure from the history books.

The case is very simple: the South fought to keep Black people as slaves. The leaders of the confederacy lead the movement to keep black humans as enslaved property. They lost. The South put up statues of them during reconstruction and Jim crow as part of a system of legalized white supremacy to subjugate Black Americans through systematic terrorism, rape, torture, and brutality. Monuments to these leaders are celebrations of the rape, torture, and enslavement of Black people.

It's really quite simple.

Just as inaccurate as saying half the country thinks that massacring Jews is an "act of liberation", though there are obviously quite a few people who believe that and those are located on the left.

Yes, there are people on the fringes that believe those things...and both of these fringes are very dangerous. I happen to share the belief that the fringes on the right are more dangerous, and certainly presented the more immediate threat when Trump was in power. However, I understand those who believe that the left fringes are more dangerous, and they do have a case. Both fringes present an existential threat to our liberal democracies, as they both have repudiated those values, so maybe those differences are not really meaningful.

Left and right are not the problem. The fringes are. Both of them. And they feed off each other, so they can only be defeated together.

If you want to defeat the right fringe, you must defeat the left fringe. If you want to defeat the left fringe, you must defeat the right fringe.

Not who you're replying to, but I think there's very strong selection effe ts in play where those more likely to speak up with passion in public places like this are more likely to lack nuance in their political views.

So it's mostly not that those with an interest in politics (even a strong interest) are less nuanced (though they probably are somewhat, as being bad at nuance makes political radicalization more likely), but that those with an interest but nuanced views will have a harder time actually bashing out a comment on the subject and will think it less likely they will be able to convince anyone (because its not a simple matter).

To me it seems like he's just hyping up things that are never going to happen while a lot of the engineers and designers actually focus on the things that make money.

Can't say much about SpaceX though

And yes, folks leaning toward hard edges of a political spectrum reliably demonstrate lack of nuanced thinking in my experience because it involves compromise, something you see less of as you approach the aforementioned edges.

I'm not sure how you made the leap to "interest in politics = more stupid".

The government's environmental assessment was bonkers. They were required to do things like assess the risk of a booster landing on a shark or whale in the middle of the ocean. They were also required to assess if the sound of the rocket would harm the breeding behavior of the seal population. To do this they had to chase down a seal, strap it down to a board with headphones and study if the sound of rocket engine were emotionally distressing to the animal.