I entirely agree. I’m quite sure Musk has a very strong stance on ethics, but it would be great to hear about it more clearly, and ideally not just through words, but through actual actions.
His whole history tells otherwise.
- the pedo guy moment
- the hyperloop smoke and mirrors which are actually just his campaign against public transport
- the several union busting episodes
- the whole “Tesla is going to save the world” thing
- the multiple harassment cases
- the multiple instances of overwork, discrimination, and general lack of any consideration for his staff
- all the severance payments he failed to make after having fired a whole bunch of people
- the stupid ultimatum before one of the firing episodes, plus the utterly stupid “show your work” thing that came just after
- the multiple times he stiffed his creditors (either landlords, lawyers, contractors in general) or tried to do it
- the way he tried to force open Tesla factories in the middle of the COVID pandemic
- the multiple instances of pushing Russian propaganda verbatim (concerning.)
- most of the Neuralink saga
- the FSD vapourware that has been coming next year for a decade
- the way he publicly disparaged people who were killed by their Tesla using telemetric data that are supposed to be confidential
- the Media Matters lawsuit
Well, I could go on. He’d need to work quite hard to reverse his public image of massive arsehole at this point.
> the way he publicly disparaged people who were killed by their Tesla using telemetric data that are supposed to be confidential
In the cases I've seen, Tesla pulled data showing that the people "killed by their Tesla" were either not paying attention at all (contrary to Tesla's explicit warnings), or were driving without the automated features enabled after all despite initial media claims to the contrary. Is this what you consider "disparagement" or do you have more egregious examples?
That said, yes. What you said is evidence that he is mean-spirited and does not follow the rules he set himself. Of course, having an ethical behaviour sometimes means making hard choices. It is not about doing things that are understandable in context, it’s about doing the right thing, even if it is at a cost to you in the short term. He does not have any history of doing so.
These people are dead. Spitting on their graves because he is annoyed by their family is absolutely unethical. Particularly since their main failure was to believe the smoke and mirrors about FSD, which is itself another ethical clusterfuck.
If he had a beef, he could have sued for defamation, where he could have shown his data in an ethical and confidential manner. He knows the deal, he’s been in more than his fair share of defamation lawsuits, on either side.
But that's just me. I doubt further debate on this would be productive.
Oh he likes to bully people with lawsuits. Amber Heard comes to mind (he bullied the studio behind Aquaman).
He doesn't care if his defense of free-speech causes him revenue losses on X.
Having moral principles is completely orthogonal to being ethical. Ayn Rand had lots of moral principles and she was still a reckless sociopath. One of his moral principles is that greed is good, and his actions certainly are consistent with this one.
He did lose a lot of money on Twitter, but you can hardly call that him following his moral principles, considering how things actually happened.
> He doesn't care if his defense of free-speech causes him revenue losses on X.
Whose free speech is he defending? There is no evidence that he champions free speech, merely that he supports however agrees with him and edgelords. He is more than happy to harass, intimidate, bully, and be a general nuisance to those whose opinions he finds objectionable.
He is primarially known specifically as someone who is incredibly impulsive, is unable to differentiate fact from fiction and not actually interested in chasing any kind of objective truth in so much as that is possible.
But multiple times per week now for a long time you can see him sharing and commenting on things that are provably wrong and I don’t mean in some kind of “it’s just a different opinion” kind of way.
There is never any kind of introspection, never any kind of “oh I was wrong” just proceeds to roll immediately into the next round of bullshit.
So, no… people don’t have any kind of assumption that he has “strong ethics”. Maybe you meant strong convictions? Because that he certainly does have.
I'm sure you could make a case that these descriptors apply to him, not a particularly strong case, but ... You think he's primarily known for these things?
You will find yourself called unethical around different groups.
Understanding what group you are in is important to keep in mind when judging others.
No one is going to get investigated or have their careers ruined because a vegan called them a murder, obviously.
Unreal what sort of knots someone will tie themselves into to excuse this type of behavior.
Your worldview seems limited to tweets and social media in first world.
If you say something false in a context where it is likely to actually harm someone, or with the goal of actually harming someone, you're an asshole.
Your level of assholeness rises in tandem with the expected harm of your falsehoods.