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Comment by retskrad | Hacker News Reader

Do you see how Elon Musk behaves in real time? That was Steve Jobs in his day, but we didn't have social media, so we didn't get to see his tantrums. Both Jobs and Musk were known for thinking very little of people outside their personal circles. It just shows that human beings are innately attracted to mythology and love to romanticize authoritative figures, even when those figures display sociopathic tendencies. Maybe that's why polls say people think less and less of democracy and more and more of autocracy all over the world. We can say these people are changing the world but we should not forget that they are not role models.

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"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

One big difference is Jobs didn't push his assholery on the world by taking over the world's dominant* social media platform to shape it in his own fashion.

I greatly admire what Elon did to push the world into EVs where no one had succeeded before him. I also think all that power and money has amplified his weaknesses and turned him into someone who I would never want to be in a position of power over me or others.

Elon also strikes me as very immature compared to Jobs, like a spoiled little brat.

* one could argue that would be FB but the nature of Twitter made it the platform of choice for anyone who wanted to broadcast their thoughts (or news) vs connect with a group of followers

Jobs' demanding personality and toxic managerial behaviour are well well well documented. Most of the documovies on him pay special attention to it.

But he also did marvellous things for the advent of human-centric tech design that has been a boon for the regular people.

An article or person is allowed to focus on his genius and invention without having to caveat them alongside his toxicity as well. This isn't intended to be an Art vs. Artist discussion.

Well for lot of people the ones changing the world are role models. Gandhi was terrible to his family but he remain role model for billion people.

> Maybe that's why polls say people think less and less of democracy..

It could also be because democracy did not deliver the things people who voted were expecting.

I'm sure if Jobs were alive to see the Cybertruck, he'd think that Musk has no taste.

I never saw Jobs promote conspiracies and racism.

Elon Musk promoted racism?

Apparently he has a history of retweeting/replying to tweets that make dubious claims linking crime with race and how it's "misrepresented" by the media.

He’ll reply to known blatant racists on X with “interesting” and similar tactics.

I think there’s a massive difference between Steve and Elon.

Perhaps if Steve had social media , things would be different. But he never took to the news to denigrate entire groups of people based on their gender and sexuality. He never had any scandals for calling people pedophiles. When he denied science, he only did so personally. Afaik I can find no evidence of him trying to influence politics significantly.

I’m not saying Steve was a saint by any means. However, the level of sociopathy one can ascribe to Steve Jobs is a minuscule fraction of that of Elons to the point I question the logic of anyone making such a vague general comparison.

It's hard to consider Jobs as sociopathic in the large when he created so much social value. And it's hard to imagine that he would have been quite so effective if he were more agreeable. So I think it's reasonable to consider the kind of rudeness that gets big things done at the cost of hurt feelings as something other than pathological.

If goodness is a necessary sacrifice for something, that something, whatever it may be, is not worth the sacrifice

> rudeness that gets big things done

I think this is a myth, that major accomplishments require running roughshod over people.

We also have a twisted idea of what "major accomplishments" are. Are Walmart and Amazon being supremely dominant in their industries, build on the back of wiping out much of small town America, and worker mistreatment, an "accomplishment"?

The iPhone was a major accomplishment. Its design was influenced by Jobs' ability to inform people when their work was not insanely great. Maybe he could have done that more gently. But lacking that rare talent it was a social good for him to do that anyway.

Yeah, not disagreeing with any of that. My contention is that it's not a _prerequisite_ to great accomplishments.

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