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Comment by benreesman | Hacker News Reader

It’s really hard to know what to think about Elon Musk these days. At a surface level he’s acting a real asshole in a bunch of ways, but he’s surprised us with some seriously useful stuff on a number of occasions and so I’m always still hoping that there’s got to be a method to the madness.

I sure hope there is because the guy is in the running for most powerful man in history.

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He can be both an excellent business/technical mind, and a massive asshole with a fragile ego. Hell, you could argue those things go together more often than not!

> At a surface level he’s acting a real asshole in a bunch of ways, but he’s surprised us with some seriously useful stuff on a number of occasions

These aren't mutually exclusive.

> It’s really hard to know what to think about Elon Musk these days

Doesn't seem that hard, tbh

I’m worried that I might have unintentionally created scope for a flame war.

I’d like to invite you to clarify why what seems a difficult topic to me seems a simple one to you?

From where I’m sitting it seems nuanced and complicated and involving decades of history.

It’s eminently possible that I’m missing key information on this, but I can’t glean a “no-brainer” from the above comment.

It seems the vast majority of people have an opinion on musk, thus it can’t be too hold to have an opinion.

This opinion is not nuanced though, because nuance is tricky and requires more effort than simply categorising into a tribal viewpoint

I would love to see sentiment analytics of Musk on HN before he came out as a libertarian/moderate/whatever he is and buying Twitter. Between here and Reddit, anecdotally I've noticed the contempt for the man is like night and day compared to 2015-ish. Even comments like your original get downvoted into oblivion lol. I've never really been a fan of him, especially with the diving rescue incident, but my theory is that tribalism has flipped sides.

I can think of two positive achievements: Pushing electric cars to the main stream (Tesla, he didn't found it, but I do believe he impacted its success dramatically) and pushing for space exploration (Space X). I find both important. Did I miss some other positive impact he's had?

I've never been a fan to be fair, and he surely didn't make it easier for me the last few years. But I think some of his potentially negative traits, incredible risk taking appetite and stubborness, propelled these two fields forward. Faster than they would have been if he wasn't around. Perhaps someone else would have done it with the same effects, I don't know.

I used to think there _must_ be method to the madness. But since the Twitter takeover and subsequent right wing transformation, I don't see it anymore. He seems way too smart to fall into a silly us-vs-them mentality. I refuse to believe he doesn't see "left" and "right" policies in a nuanced light. My only explanation is that he's going through some severe personal issues, and we're witnessing the symptoms in public. I don't like him, but I hope he can work through them and find happiness. Not just for his sake.

My interpretation is he just cares a lot more about tech than people, for better or worse.

High IQ, Low EQ.

I think it's pretty easy, he's obviously a far-right libertarian that rejoices at the riots in England, posts antisemitic tropes on the social network he bought for some dozens of billions of dollars so that he could keep other far-right bigots online for reasons of "free speech", he's a rich, dangerous racist with a deep coffer.

I take a pretty dim view of the stuff you’re alluding to, I hope I was clear that he’s coming off as kind of an asshole from where I’m sitting. It’s got kind of a Tech Kanye vibe and it’s a bad look in 2024.

But certainly I’ve posted some stuff online I wish I could take back, I suspect most have, and given the cool stuff around renewable energy and rockets I’m rooting for a good outcome.

I think the biggest difference between you and Musk is that you wish you could take stuff back, and Musk appears not to share that desire. And continues to express them. The rockets and energy stuff will keep going for now no matter who's at the helm.

> But certainly I’ve posted some stuff online I wish I could take back

He really doesn't look like someone who wants to take anything back. In the past couple years he basically doubled down on everything unpleasant about him, sadly.

How one can go from having interesting opinions on all sorts of scientific topics to being able to entertain Trump's rumblings for an hour is beyond me, but that's what happened.

The "pedo guy" incident was the turning point, at least publicly. Before that he was eccentric and an emitter of a lot of flowery bullshit ("full self driving next year!") but mostly harmless, and probably doing more positive than negative.

After that it was just one unhinged incident after another, growing worse and worse.

I mean, possibly the American definition of ‘libertarian’ has finally been diluted to ‘literally nothing’, but I’d find it hard to call Musk’s embrace of Trump, the authoritarian, particularly libertarian.

Yes. Like Trump, Musk isn't a libertarian - he's an opportunist who espouses pop-libertarian ideals when it suits him. Musk's leadership style is typical of an autocratic dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, and by accounts Trump is the same.

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